Sunset Limited
Martin Spellman

Ghosts from the past, both personal and historical, is a theme James Lee Burke uses with success. The ghost in this one, sure to please an JLB fan, is Jack Flynn, a trade union organiser who was crucified against a barn by the Klu Klux Klan in the 1950s. His children, Meg and Cisco, arrive in New Iberia to make a film. But why has Cisco hired the crazoid Swede Boxleiter? Who is trying to kill 'Cool Breeze' Broussard? And what is behind the apparent suicide of Broussard's wife, 20 years ago? The crucified body was seen by detective, Dave Robicheaux, as a child, and he is quickly roped in. I think Burke has tried to put too much history into this one. Although Flynn and his murder pervade the book I could get no sense of the man, who seems without roots and personality. He was supposedly a 'Wobbly' (member of the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW) a syndicalist, union organisation that peaked just before the First World War and faded in the 1920s. Many of its leading militants, like the Rebel Girl', Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (same name) and William Z. Foster, then joined the Communist Party. Jack Flynn goes on to fight with the 'Abraham Lincoln Brigade' in the mid 30s in defence of the Spanish Republic. At the time of his murder he is a union organiser in the south in the early 50s. Putting him in the Wobblies as well as the Spanish Civil War makes him a bit too old, as to have been a Wobbly activist you would have probably been born in the last century. The Wobblies are associated with drives to organise unskilled workers but the real work was actually done by the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO), founded in 1935, and was the organisation Flynn would have been working for in the 50s. Including a diary or some papers left by Flynn would have given a better view of the actual man rather than just a historical silhouette. Robicheaux has already lost one wife to a violent death and it is too late to do anything about it now in the series but I feel he could do without the wife and daughter angle. All the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps stuff (Lawrence Block does it as well) begins to grate after a while. Also are Clete Purcel's violent flings against medium level gangsters really credible? I counted at least nine deaths - not on a John Sandford level but can they all be necessary? That said, I can't wait for the next ramble around the Bayou Teche with a well paced and gutsy story like this.

Posted at 12:00AM Monday 01 Jan 2007