REVIEW: Swan Peak by James Lee Burke

As a general rule, I am not a great fan of picking established characters out of their natural habitat and plonking them down somewhere else. Too often  the stories feel manufactured, false and somewhat self-indulgent on the author's part. 

So it was with a little trepidation that I picked up James Lee Burke's Swan Peak, which has taken Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel from their native Louisiana up to Montana for a spot of fishing. Burke has history in Montana, where he has set a series that for a time ran in parallel to the Robicheaux books and which never reached the same heights - for me anyway. 

But then Burke splits his own time between New Iberia, La. and Missoula - and so if he does, then why not Dave and Clete? Or perhaps after the heart-breaking Tin Roof Blowdown, he just needed a break from Louisiana.

Well, I should learn to have more faith. How often in the previous 16 Robicheaux novels has Burke let me down? Not often. And not here. 

Montana is a glorious setting for Dave and Clete's peculiar brand of "relaxation": it is wild, untamed, moody, magnificent and unpredictable. In this setting, Dave and Clete effectively play out the story of their lives: an inability to turn their back on injustce; an equivocal view of where the line between justice and injustice exists and their role (official or otherwise) in addressing it; and an inability to stay clear of trouble and violence.

In a sense this entire series is as much, perhaps more, of an examination of the legacy of Vietnam in the young men who came back alive but damaged as it is an exploration of the dark side of modern American society. But in no Robicheaux book has that legacy ever been examined in as harsh and unforgiving a light as this one. And perhaps Burke had to take the Bobbsey Twins from homicide out of the Bayou to do that.

Whatever the reason it has produced some of his most inspired writing, including this line that perhaps best captures the essence of 17 books: "For a lifetime, violence and the shedding of blood had been our addiction and bane. We had traded off our youth for Vietnam and had brought back a legacy of gall and vinegar that we could not rinse out of dreams. We had learned little from the past and were condemned to recommit most of its mistakes... What's the point? You don't have to drink alcohol to stay drunk."

This is the most psychological of all the Robicheaux books. The one seemingly most intent at getting inside the mind and asking why people do the terrible things they do, whoever they are.

And it felt to me that the storyline was largely immaterial, except that it provided Burke with a huge window into the mind. Not that the storyline did not work. Yes, it was a stretch at some points to imagine even Cletus and Dave finding that much trouble a thousand miles from home, but not a big stretch. And the narrative of their investigation into the violent deaths of a couple of students in the hills above the property they are staying was typically well handled and satisying to the last.

But really, this book was about Dave and Cletus, and in that it was utterly magnificent and as compelling as anything Burke has written in his illustrious career. First class.