Enjoyed James lee Burke's Crusader's Cross. It's another Detective Dave Robicheaux novel with the usual cast of gothic Southern characters. You know, if someone based his knowledge of southerners totally on the characters in William Faulkner and James Lee burke novels, he'd think there wasn’t a sane human being south of Baltimore. Then again, maybe there isn't.
Two overall comments before I tackle specifics in Crusader's Cross:
1) Comparisons happen, and I'm not sure the one I'm about to describe says either of the writers involved is a "better" writer. As most of you know, the Dave Robicheaux series is the second "detective" series I've set out to read my way through. (Actually it's the third—no, fourth—fifth?—but we'll get to those in the next point.) The first was Ed McBain's 57th precinct novels. Now one thing I admired appreciated in the McBain novels was the author's absolute brutality. I'd get to know and like some character, then—bam!—forty pages later he'd be dead. I thought Burke was going to do something similar in Crusader's Cross. Robicheaux falls in love and gets married—oddly enough to sort of a Catholic nun lite. She's
