Purple Cane Road is the eleventh mystery novel in the Dave Robicheaux series by author James Lee Burke.
Dave Robicheaux has spent his life confronting the old adage that fathers’ sins are passed on to children. But what is his mother’s legacy? Dying with him at a young age, Mae Guillory was closed in the deepest recesses of Robicheaux’s mind. He lives with the fact that he will never really know what happened to the woman who abandoned him for the devices of an alcoholic father. Dave still feels his mother’s loss and knows that the endless series of disappointments in her life cannot have a happy ending.

While helping an old friend, Dave was shocked when a pimp glanced sideways at him and asked if he was the son of Mae Guillory, the prostitute that a group of policemen murdered 30 years ago. Her body was dumped in the bay bordering Purple Cane Road, and the policemen who left her there are still working.

Dave’s search for his mother’s killers leads him to dark places in his past, and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother’s son. Purple Cane Road is the size of a classic – passionate, murderous and almost heartbreaking – packed into a wonderfully executed plot that surprises from start to finish.

If you want to spend a little time in another place, another world, few writers can get you there like James Lee Burke. But perhaps his greatest asset is his lyrical language. This book, set in southern Louisiana, is simply filled with atmosphere. It’s dark, moody, and complicated, like all the JLB books. The story that drives the story is probably good, rather than great. But what sets him apart from other crime writers is the humanity in his deeply flawed characters.

There is no happy ending. Nothing ever works well. The good guys sometimes don’t seem to be much better than the bad guys. But the fact that they keep trying somehow seems more exhilarating than any simple horror movie.

• Purple Cane Road

• A Dave Robicheaux Novel, Book 11
• By: James Lee Burke

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