A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke

 

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 11, 2020

Like many Robicheaux novels, A Private Cathedral is a meditation on the nature of evil. Crime writers have a tendency to conceptualize evil as a force, sometimes one that has supernatural origins. James Lee Burke did that in Light of the World. He returns to the theme of evil as a force beyond human understanding in A Private Cathedral.

Dave Robicheaux tells the story as something that happened many years in the past. In the present, Robicheaux and his friend Clete Purcell contemplate the evil of white supremacists who stand guard over statues of Confederate generals and the oppression of freedom that they represent. In the past, the story opens with Robicheaux watching Johnny Shondell, Louisiana’s answer to Elvis, performing on a bandstand. Isolda Balangie, who appears to be seventeen, approaches Robicheaux because he was once a cop. She tells him that the Balangie family has hated the Shondell family for generations. Johnny Shondell is nevertheless delivering her to his Uncle Mark for reasons Robicheaux would prefer not to understand.

Robicheaux visits Marcel LaForchette in prison at LaForchette’s request. Robicheaux agrees to see him because he “wanted to believe that evil has an explainable origin, one that has nothing to do with unseen forces or even a cancerous flaw in the midst of Creation, and that even the worst of men could reclaim the light they had banished from their souls.” LaForchette, a former mob enforcer who claims to have information about the Kennedy assassination, would like Robicheaux to give him a job so he can be paroled to Louisiana. His promises of reform make Robicheaux wonder whether he might have reclaimed the light.

LaForchette used to work for the Balangie family (he claims to have been the driver on the whack of a child molester ordered by the Balangies) but when Robicheaux next hears about him, he is on parole and working for the Shondells. Two private investigators approach Robicheaux for information about the disappearance of Isolde and its possible connection to LaForchette’s release.

The investigators end up dead and dismembered, as do a good many others. Robicheaux would like to stay out of it, but he can’t abide the Balangies and Shondells using a teenage girl as currency for a deal. His friend Clete Purcell would also prefer to avoid the drama until he finds himself strung upside down as a fire is being set below his head. Purcell isn’t sure how this fits into the Balangie/Shondell situation, but he means to find out.

This sets up what seems like a typical crime story — typical for Burke, who sets his stories in the deepest depths of southern corruption and depravity — but the novel takes a twist with the introduction of a reptilian character named Gideon Richetti, who is either a time traveler or has lived through evil events in the distant past. Richetti represents enduring evil, the kind that brought us Auschwitz and Huey Long and prisoners who die from dehydration after being locked for days in a steel coffin in the Louisiana heat.

Against his better judgment (or perhaps in the absence of judgment), Robicheaux becomes involved with Isolda’s mother, Penelope Balangie, who may or may not be married to Adonis Balangie. He also becomes involved (he thinks, given that he attributes his involvement on both occasions to blackouts) with Leslie Rosenberg, a woman Adonis is keeping on the side. Other key characters include a priest who may or may not have given into his temptations and a bent cop named Carroll LeBlane.

The plot is harrowing. As was true in Light of the World, its supernatural elements might (but probably don’t) have earthly explanations. Robicheaux would like to find a rational explanation for the slave ship he keeps seeing, the one that is also in Purcell’s dreams. He would like to think there is a reason for Richetti’s knowledge of events in Robicheaux’s past that he has never shared, or for Richetti himself, who starts the novel as more snake than human but evolves the story progresses. Those explanations will be just as hard for the reader to conjure as they are for Robicheaux. Everything that troubles Robicheaux could be in his imagination because, as he acknowledges, “superstition has its origin in fear.” Robicheaux has plenty to fear, but Burke makes clear that he isn’t alone. All our problems are grounded in fear.

Burke’s point seems to be that evil has had such an ineradicable presence throughout history that it can only be explained as a force that influences good people to do bad things. The alternative, as Robicheaux ponders, is that humans are not good at all, that they are fundamentally flawed and will trip over themselves in their hurry to harm others to satisfy their own sense of superiority. “I believe that most human activity is not rational and is often aimed at self-destruction,” Robicheaux says. “I also believe that ordinary human beings will participate in horrific deeds if they are provided a ritual that will allow them to put their conscience in abeyance.” Hence the ability of humans not just to turn their back on obvious evil, but to encourage it.

One reason to read any Burke novel is to luxuriate in his prose. “Here’s the strange thing about death,” Robicheaux explains. “At a certain age it’s always with you, lurking in the shade, pulling at your ankles, whispering in your ear when you pass a crypt. But it doesn’t get your real attention until you find yourself home alone and the wind swells inside the rooms and stresses the joists and lets you know what silence and solitude are all about.”

The other reason to read Burke is that few crime writers manage to plumb the souls of their protagonists, the struggle between their flawed natures and their fundamental decency, with such depth while still telling a riveting story. A Private Cathedral is just the latest reminder of why Burke occupies a laminated position in my list of favorite crime novelists.

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