JAMES LEE BURKE: DAVE ROBICHEAUX’S PRIVATE CATHEDRAL

James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels have always been meditations on the nature of evil, or perhaps more accurately, on human nature itself, because central to those meditations is Dave’s grappling with the darker side of his own nature. In that sense, A Private Cathedral is the apex of that meditation, a dreamy shadowy narrative that finds Dave face to face with different personifications of evil, which emphasize the quality of his own fight as part of an eternal battle.

At the story’s core is a multi-generational pact between the Balangie and Shondell families, who control crime in the area of New Iberia, a city of almost 30,000 people, in which there must be an awful lot of crime to control, if two families are feuding over and feeding off it. Their feud goes back some 400 years, when a Shondell burnt a Balangie at the stake. Now, in the latest sort of accommodation between the families, the lovely Isolde Balangie is due to be delivered to Mark Shondell, head of the family, by his nephew Johnny, a budding rock star (shades of Tommy James and the Shondells?). Johnny and Isobel, however, have fallen for each other. Johnny is not quite a Tristan, but with Mark and Isolde you should recognise the reference.

Dave takes on the task of finding out whether or not she has been kidnapped into some sort of Balangie white slavery…