Ah, Nature Tooth and Claw in 'Swan Peak'

Review of SWAN PEAK (Simon & Schuster Audio 2008)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, James Lee Burke; read by Will Patton

Let me stipulate: The Rockies are beautiful, the snow-kissed peaks, the gathering purple shadows, the sound of wind in the pines and larches, cut-throat trout slowly wheeling under lime Jell-O-clear water…If you have read rhapsodic nature-worshipping James Lee Burke, you know where I am going with this.

Burke, who lives in Montana and New Orleans, is apparently a rich man longing for the old America, where men went to war, killed or were maimed, came back and toughed it out in small towns, tramping along as cops or serial killers with their demons riding their backs and peculiar moral codes thumping in their chests.

Under the endlessly gorgeous descriptions of natural sights and sounds, Burke lets us know none too subtly, beats a black heart, men who look like other men but long to burn people alive and backhoe them into premature graves while they struggle to find oxygen amongst the richly fragrant humus being tossed on top of them.

Enter Clete Purcel, the wild-living former cop and rule-shattering PI of many Burke books, and his enigmatically explosive New Iberia, Louisiana, police pal Dave Robicheaux (this is their 16th outing). This time, the duo has traveled to visit a crusading professor (Burkean?) living in one of the most idyllic places on earth.

First thing, mayhem-magnet Clete runs afoul of some trashy bodyguards for two local oil barons, who have the bad judgment to run over the Clete-ster’s fly rod. Uh-oh.

It's on, babies.

I won't drop spoilers, but dragged into the volatile mix is a sexually conflicted prison guard, an earnest C&W singer, a gold-digging gal with pipes of her own, a rather thoughtful woman with flowers tattooed all over her tatas, some hapless college kids, and a tacky preacher man.

Will Patton, a perennial favorite reader of Burke books, mutters on in his soft, Southern voice, peeling back the beauty of a sunset to reveal the bloody and bloody-minded human pollution that lies beneath it.

Do I sound cynical? I love Burke, but seriously? This is starting to freak me out. Maybe he spends all day thinking about the only geography that counts, according to him—the hole we will lie in. But I don’t. Sometimes I watch TV, even…

I am being cremated, anyhow—and after I die, too.

Star Lawrence owns a recession-beating site called Do the Hopey Copey, http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com. Her other audio reviews can be found at http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com.