Review: James Lee Burke's Private Cathedral

For older guys who have soaked their brains in alcohol for decades, been shot, beaten, blown up, kicked in the heads, and tortured, detectives Clete and Robicheaux are in fighting shape. Not only that, but Robicheaux must have a closet full of Viagra because, for an old, depressed, fried guy, he has no trouble getting on with gangsters' wives and girlfriends. When will Clete and Robicheaux ever learn? How have they lived this long?

Why am I writing about a James Lee Burke novel, A Private Cathedral, when I normally cover horror? Because every once in awhile, Burke's books feature ghosts, demons, dead Confederates, and figures that may or may not be of the imagination. Sometimes the denizens of the night are in Robicheaux's mind, but everybody seems to be seeing the Medieval lizard-man who rides a sea-going galleon rowed by the damned. Who is this torturer from the past and is the Louisiana mob in the hands of the devil?

It takes two frayed, soused, haunted, depressed detectives to take on the demon.

One of the things I've always liked about Burke's books is that they describe the wet, the humid, the rotting and the beauty of the swamps and bayous in such a way that you feel like you are there. I've lived in the deep South (I know, I know, I've lived a lot of places) and there is something spooky and supernatural about it. Burke is good at bringing out the reasons the deep South feels cursed As William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead, it isn't even past."  Burke's Louisiana books, including Private Cathedral, are full of the atmosphere that the past isn't past.