Synopses & Reviews
From Edgar Award-winner James Lee Burke comes this emotional powerhouse of a novel...in which everyman hero Dave Robicheaux confronts the secrets of his long-forgotten past in a shattering tale of revenge, murder, and a mother's haunting legacy....
Robicheaux first hears it from a pimp eager to trade information for his life: Mae Guillory was murdered outside a New Orleans nightclub by two cops. Dave Robicheaux was just a boy when his mother ran out on him and his whiskey-driven father.
Now Robicheaux is a man, still haunted by her desertion and her death. More than thirty-five years after Mae Guillory died, her son will go to any length to bring her killers to justice. And as he moves closer to what happened that long-ago night, the Louisiana cop crosses lines of color and class to find the place where secrets of his past lie buried...and where all roads lead to revenge -- but only one road leads to the truth....
Review
"A thoroughly absorbing mystery packed with the colorful characters and moral dilemmas that have turned Dave Robicheaux into one of the more vivid literary creations of the last 20 years." Daily News (New York)
Review
"America's best novelist." The Denver Post
Review
"Nobody writes about the bad old days down South like James Lee Burke." The New York Times
Synopsis
Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the age-old adage that the sins of the father pass onto the son. But what has his mother s legacy left him? Dead to him since youth, Mae Guillory has been shuttered away in the deep recesses of Dave s mind. He s lived with the fact that he would never really know what happened to the woman who left him to the devices of his whiskey-driven father. But deep down, he still feels the loss of his mother and knows the infinite series of disappointments in her life could not have come to a good end.
While helping out an old friend, Dave is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks him if he is Mae Guillory s boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. The pimp goes on to insinuate that the cops who dumped her body in the bayou were on the take and continue to thrive in the New Orleans area.
Dave s search for his mother s killers leads him to the darker places in his past and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother s son. Purple Cane Road has the dimensions of a classic-passion, murder, and nearly heartbreaking poignancy-wrapped in a wonderfully executed plot that surprises from start to finish."
About the Author
James Lee Burke is the author of nineteen books, including the bestsellers Heartwood, Sunset Limited, Cimarron Rose, Cadillac Jukebox, Burning Angel, and Dixie City Jam. He lives with his wife in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.