'Crusader's Cross'
By James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster, $25.95.
James Lee Burke, who has been writing popular novels since 1965, has just finished No. 25. Not a bad career for a guy who started as a pipeliner and truck driver and ended up as a newspaper reporter and a college professor.
In the 1980s Burke created Dave Robicheaux, a Louisiana police detective, and he has been writing about him ever since. In "Crusader's Cross," Robicheaux deals with a deathbed confession from an old schoolmate and an unhappy time in his own life. In the '50s, Robicheaux and his brother, Jimmie, met a girl named Ida Durbin. Jimmie fell in love with her without knowing she was a prostitute. She was abducted and never seen again.
Robicheaux tries to find out what happened to Ida, which gets him in trouble. As he does some serious detective work, Robicheaux is caught up in a series of murders apparently engineered by the New Orleans mob. The book is suspenseful and characterized by Burke's gifted lyrical writing. Predictably, it follows one year after Burke's last successful novel, "Red Ponies." — Dennis Lythgoe
'Close Case'
By Alafair Burke
Henry Holt, $22.
Oddly enough, James Lee Burke's lawyer daughter has also turned out to be a popular crime writer — with emphasis on her continuing character, Samantha Kincaid, a deputy district attorney in Portland, Ore. — the same job Burke herself held before making it big in fiction.
Alafair Burke is more anecdotal in her storytelling style than her father, who is known for the literary touch.
This book begins with a bludgeoning death of Percy Crenshaw, an investigative reporter. His death is related to a police officer shooting an unarmed mother of two the week before. Once Kincaid starts investigating the case, she finds a strange connection between Portland's drug trade and the police precinct in Northeast Portland.
Things get sticky as she discovers the old story of "good cops" vs. "bad cops."
"Close Case" follows "Missing Justice," a novel that Burke wrote last year — and it has the same power and suspense. — Dennis Lythgoe
'Our Fathers' War'
By Tom Mathews
Broadway, $24.95.
This book, subtitled "Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation," is written by Tom Mathews, a former Salt Lake Tribune reporter and more recently a Newsweek staffer, seems to be piggy-backing the Tom Brokaw "Greatest Generation" books. Mathews tells the stories of 10 World War II veterans and their baby boomer sons.
The book grew from Mathews' own rocky relations with his 80-year-old father, who returned from the war and used some heavy, military-style authority on his son. The conclusion left from the book is that their own father/son clashes were deeply rooted in generational matters — and millions of other baby boomers were probably going through the same things.
So Mathews tells his own story, then adds nine other father/son clashes he uncovered through research. In a final chapter, the author tells of his father and his visit to Italy to revisit scenes from the war and to try to negotiate their own "separate peace."
This is a traditional sort of book about manhood and how men should properly relate to each other. — Dennis Lythgoe