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Dave Robicheaux, an aging deputy with the New Iberia, Louisiana sheriff's department, is drawn into investigating the apparent suicide of a lovely young coed. The incident creates ripples that flow like widening circles approaching the murky shallows of a still pond. Mobbed-up casino owners, a beautiful grifter with a grudge, stable boys and frat boys surface as his search for the truth widens.
The sensual atmospheric and emotional tension swirling around the eccentric villains, heroes and anti-heroes Dave has collected in his checkered, bourbon-soaked past never has been more artfully portrayed than in PEGASUS DESCENDING. There are a few new villains, but many are holding court with memorable heavies from one or more of James Lee Burke's 14 previous Robicheaux novels. As in CRUSADER'S CROSS, Dave seems bent on personal redemption as he tries to right a wrong in pursuit of the bad guys, often bringing along one of the baddest, his buddy and ex-NOPD partner Clete Purcell, to even the score.
No other contemporary detective fiction writer can imbue a novel with as many labyrinthine plot twists and action and still flesh out characters in such vivid and entertaining detail. An indigent bottle-and-can collector may be a witness to an act leading up to the death of the young woman. Dave seeks help from Monarch Little, a black drug dealer, in contacting him:
"The bottle-and-can collector was named Ripton Armentor. As Monarch had said, he looked like he had been assembled from a box of discarded spare parts. His shoulders were square, his chest flat as an ironing board, and his torso too long for his legs, so that his trousers looked like they had been taken off a midget. Worse yet, his head was not much larger than a shot put. And as though he were deliberately trying to compete with the physical incongruities fate had imposed upon him, he wore a neatly pressed blue denim shirt with a necktie that extended all the way to his belt, giving him the appearance of an inverted exclamation mark. He sat on the top step of his gallery and listened to Monarch explain who I was and what I wanted, the cane fields around his house swirling with wind. It was obvious he was retarded or autistic, but paradoxically his expression was electric, one of fascination with the intrigue and sense of adventure that had been brought to his front door."
Killer Hurricane Katrina hovers in the Atlantic, then inexorably stalks the Louisiana coast as the case draws to a close. PEGASUS DESCENDING is more than a novel filled with action, suspense, violence and (yes, even for Medicare card-bearers Dave and Clete) a little sweet sex. It is an elegy, perhaps a requiem, for his beloved New Orleans and the Louisiana bayous he has so lovingly portrayed for over 20 years. The reader almost can hear the echoes of Dave's youth flowing out the open doors of jazz halls and the bawdy parades along New Orleans's historic streets. We can sense the rustling leaves and far-off thunder across the bayous dimpled with rain and surfacing catfish.
The saga of Dave Robicheaux has not ended. A magnetic attraction for trouble is so much a part of Dave's psyche that readers can curl up with confidence and escape into the seamy, steamy world of vividly portrayed characters, spun through Burke's exquisite prose. Burke regularly summons Dave's past ghosts, provokes present dangers and portends future consequences. As he laments at the end of the book, "If age brings either wisdom or answers to ancient questions, it has made an exception for me."
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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