Dixie City Jam

Burke must be Cajun at heart. He knows my people well.. Love his books. Wish this copy had the jacket with it as I'm keeping his books.

"Not many believe this, but in the early months of 1942, Nazi submarines used to lie in wait at the mouth of the Mississippi for the tankers that sailed without naval escort from the oil refineries at Baton Rouge into the Gulf of Mexico." With those intriguing opening lines, ex New Orleans policeman Dave Robicheaux is off on his seventh pulse pounding adventure. When Dave's friend, Batist, is arrested for the murder of a drug dealer in New Orleans, bail money is needed. In order to raise $10,000, Dave agrees to look for a Nazi submarine sunk in 1942. Burke, a master of Cajun crime combines this with a treasure hunt, a woman in peril, the involvement of Dave's former partner in a Mafia vendetta, political maneuvering in the New Orleans police department, and a terrifying neo-Nazi villain. Set in a New Orleans most of us have never seen, "Dixie City Jam" is a galvanizing, suspenseful, one-of-a-kind thriller that pulls the reader from page to page just as inexorably as the ol' Mississippi keeps rolling along. - Gail Cooke

I went to a Borders reading with James Lee Burke and his humble, yet confident voice added new dimension to his characters...as if that's possible. Dave Robicheaux and his buddy Clete Purcel just about walk into the room anytime I open the pages of these books. Unfortunately, Burke's antagonists are just as palpable. The evil lurking beneath the surface of certain scenes is dark and frighteningly real. It's hard not to cheer for Robicheaux as he faces his foes and, usually, reacts before he thinks. Burke wraps this gritty realism and dialogue in some of the most beautiful and vivid metaphors around. Some accuse Burke's writing of shallow plotting, and I understand their viewpoint. I choose, though, to wander along with Dave Robicheaux through the heat and sound and smells of his day and see where it may lead us. Somehow this style gives his stories an uncharted realism that I personally appreciate. Like the cajun food Burke writes of, his words are alive with flavor and texture and subtlety beneath a layer of eye-popping spices. And--as his fans well know--your sense of smell will also be invited to the meal. Pull up a chair and savor some good Louisiana cooking.

I've read four Dave Robicheaux novels so far, every one a winner. No complaints, only praise.

When I heard Will Patton's first sentence of my first Dave Robicheaux novel I really did feel that I was transported to New Orleans and southern La. Those wonderful full, round vowels, clipped d's and t's at the end of words, and the melodious, artistic descriptions paint a picture I can't get enough of. Now I'm waiting to get my hands on the next James Lee Burke masterpiece - especially with Patton reading. Don't worry about which of Burke's novels you're grabbing because eventually you'll read them all, one after another like not being able to stop eating pralines or fresh oysters!

This was the first James Lee Burke novel I had ever read and it was so good that within a summer of reading Dixie City Jam, I had read all of his New Iberia novels. A beautifully detailed, exciting, well written myster. Burke is the best, I recommend this novel and all his other works