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To be the author of the most rejected book in the history of New York publishing is not what most writers would like to see in their biography: to be the author of a Pulitzer nominated title would be far more desirable. Yet what if one person held the distinction for possessing both - for the same novel? James Lee Burke, after having earned acclaim for early works, wrote The Lost Get-Back Boogie with, given the success of his earlier books, a reasonable expectation of earning a quid or two (sorry, a dollar or several) from its sales. It took nine years and a hundred and eleven rejections for the work to see publication. Following the Pulitzer nominee's success, Burke's career has never looked back. An incomplete list of his titles includes Half of Paradise, To The Bright And Shining Sun, The Lost Get-Back Boogie, The Neon Rain, Heaven's Prisoner, A Stained White Radiance, In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead, Cadillac Jukebox Sunset Limited, Purple Cane Road, Jolie Blon's Bounce and White Doves At Morning. Even for an author, Burke has worked at an incongruous mixture of jobs :social worker in Los Angeles, English lecturer, landman negotiating oil leases, a journalist and several other temporary vocations. All such is grist to the auctorial imagination. Although Detective Dave Robicheaux shares much of his creator's tendencies and past, Burke had not written a fictionalised biography until Cimarron Rose. This novel saw the creation of a new character, Billy Bob Holland, a man whose great-grandfather was the fabricated personification of James Lee Burke's own great-grandfather. The book was a huge success. Last Car to Elysian Fields, however, is a further chapter, a singularly dark one, in the life of Dave Robichaux but should prove as successful as the Holland opus. Like his creator, Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic. Dave has lost his beloved wife, Bootsie, and his adopted daughter, Alafair (who shares a name with Burke's own adopted daughter) is away at college. Small wonder, then, that the detective is teetering dangerously on the edge of resuming his career as a practising alcoholic. After all, his best friend, the violent Clete Purcell, is not averse to indulging in excessive drinking binges. Fortunately, however, Dave's Catholic priest friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, is close at hand to exert a beneficial influence on Burke's protagonist despite his own constant self-criticism. One of the strangest hitmen in crime fiction, Max Coll, has been commissioned, for reasons which become clear as the narrative progresses, to assassinate Fr. Jimmie. Astonishingly, he puts both the priest and the detective in his debt. In the meantime, Robicheaux investigates the murder of a black convict, a folk singer, which occurred the better (or worse) part of half a century in the past. Detective Dave, now subordinate to his former partner Helen Soileau, has to investigate the sad death of three teenage girls in a car accident. They had been indulging in under-age drinking and Dave searches out the owner of the bottle shop where they made their purchases. The doctor father of the girl who was driving seeks redress from the man whom he thinks is responsible for the ruin of his life and, serendipitously, this man is also implicated in the death of the black criminal. Dave Robicheaux always has problems controlling the deep-seated rage which is a part of his personality. In the face of his loneliness and despair in this novel, it has ample opportunity to rise to the surface. Dave and Clete do incredible damage in the course of the very violent tale. Robicheaux, too, is tempted by the wife of a gangster, a woman with whom he had a brief fling in his drinking days. What outcome can be expected from a man whose control has slipped so drastically since the death of his wife? Whenever I read a Burke novel I remind myself, my love of jazz notwithstanding, never to travel to New Orleans or New Iberia, and this book does nothing to weaken my resolve. Nevertheless, this fast-paced story, with just a soupçon of the supernatural - nothing like the hefty dollop of the same in In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead - leaves me very anxious to discover what next is in store from the keyboard of the extremely able and talented James Lee Burke.
Reviewed by Denise Wels Pickles, November 2003
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