Last Car To Elysian Fields (Hardcover)

Accompanying Fr. Jimmie Dolan though Toxic Alley, a wetlands area where waste disposal contractors have poisoned the groundwater and sickened dozens of young black children with their illegal dumping, Robicheaux visits the granddaughter of Junior Crudup, a blues singer and guitarist from the 1950s, who disappeared in Angola Penitentiary. Determined to discover what happened to him, Robicheaux also wants to know who is responsible for the recent beating Fr. Dolan, the Catholic priest. While this plot is unfolding, three seventeen-year-old girls die in a car crash, shortly after stopping at an illegal "drive-by daiquiri store." The manager of the store soon shows up dead, and his connections to other, supposedly legitimate local businessmen come under scrutiny. The business of pornography and drugs bring Mafia hitmen into the city, and soon bedlam breaks out, as the local police, county police, state undercover agents, and the FBI all lay claim to investigation.

Successfully incorporating a great deal of historical background into the action, Burke shines a spotlight on the criminal activity, showing the reader its scope and giving some perspective on how and why the social problems we observe in the novel came into being. Marauding white street gangs of the 1950s, the systemic sadism of the penitentiary and its Red Hat Gang of the '50s, virulent racism, the rise to power and wealth of men engaged in dishonest businesses, the collusion of police and their reward of lucrative payoffs, the activities of organized crime syndicates, and the ability of those in power to manipulate both the political and legal systems are all shown to be contributing factors in the corruption we observe in these plot lines. Descriptive but sometimes brutal in its action, the novel gives us a darker, more cynical Robicheaux, a man taking dangerous chances in a dangerous city, with seemingly little to lose.

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One of the beauties of this book is that any one of several mysteries would have been more than adequate to have made this an above-average book. For example, an ex-IRA hit man, Max Coll, has a gambling debt he cannot pay off. He's given the choice of killing a Catholic priest. In a second plot line, a talented songwriter and singer, Junior Crudup, found his way into the bottom of Louisiana's prison system from which he disappeared with no trace. The prisoner turns out to have been used as a laborer by a prominent war hero who denies remembering the prisoner. In a third plot line, a 17 year-old girl kills herself and two others while driving drunk. She got the booze at a drive-through "daiquiri window" . . . and someone wants to stop the investigation into the daiquiri window. Dave also finds the man who miswired his house . . . and caused Bootsie's death in an earlier book. Someone is bound to pay for that! In the background, there are also porn stars, ex-lovers, sleazeballs, and other assorted criminals. Against this backdrop, Clete Purcel is his most outrageous righter of wrongs.

After the book was over, I found myself thinking that this book must surely deserve to be a five-star book. Then, I realized that the novel leaves so little room for hope and redemption that I found myself more despairing about people than encouraged about them. I hope that in future books, Mr. Burke will also show redemptive qualities as well as the darker side of human nature.

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