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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dave Sticks Out His Elbows to Make Room for Hope, 26 Aug 2005
One of the beauties of James Lee Burke's remarkable series about Dave Robicheaux is that we come to live inside Dave's world of turbulent emotions, violent people, dangerous situations and perplexing crimes as though his world is our world. Few authors today can succeed in taking you out of your own life as well as James Lee Burke does, and Crusader's Cross is one of his most successful novels from this perspective.After a series has gone on for quite a few books, many novelists find themselves stuck for where to take their hero or heroine next. In Crusader's Cross, James Lee Burke essentially restarts Dave as a character by changing his relationships in an unexpected way. If you've liked any of the books in the series, this one is bound to be one of your favorites. A lot of loving care went into the writing. Sentences are sparse and bare where that evokes the right emotion and other sentences sparkle with bits and pieces of setting and emotion in other cases. Here's a description of a gunshot victim as he realizes he's been shot: "His mouth hung open, his stomach went soft and trembled like a bowl of Jell-O, his eyes fluttered and rolled as he went into shock." Talk about effective writing! You can feel it in your own body. The story may seem to ramble, but that's the way Dave thinks. It's all part of the story telling . . . which is to help you be Dave. When Dave and his half-brother Jimmie were just out of school, they found themselves menaced by sharks off the beach in Galveston. Just when they wondered if they would survive, they found themselves saved by a plucky, pretty girl, Ida Durbin. Between her lovely self and her beautiful voice, Jimmie cannot get enough of her. His passion leads to an unexpected fork in the road for their lives and those of many other people. When Dave asks a few casual questions about Ida Durbin years later, he brings down a whole lot of wrath on his head. If you are like me, you'll find the story's developments to be both surprising and fascinating from there. If those complications aren't enough, Dave finds himself back as a sworn officer of the law investigating a serial murderer . . . who seems to be taunting the local police about something or other. What happens to us when we get too much pressure? The results are often not very pretty. My only complaint about the story is that there is a little too much misleading information placed in various parts, which makes it all but impossible to figure out what's really going on. But it certainly will make you feel sympathetic to Dave as he flounders. I did like the way that the plot has so many unexpected twists and turns. I raced to the end and I'm sure you will too.
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by James Lee Burke
by James Lee Burke
by James Lee Burke
by James Lee Burke
by James Lee Burke
