Crusader's Cross

Crusader’s Cross

The world of New Iberia and Acadiana is the setting of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux. And while Robicheaux, the alcoholic, former and once-again detective for the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office is the protagonist of the novel, the area becomes equally important for the novel.

This is a world where class still matters, and where the landed gentry of Antebellum Louisiana still control far too much land, too much clout, and too many lives. In such a world, there is little doubt that the Chalons family controls not only the means to ruin people’s lives but that they fail to reflect on whether there is a reason to do it.  The patriarch of the family holds to antique clothing and manners, being impressed by politeness but not bothering to acknowledge his own past misdeeds that live on the family property. His son, Valerie, styles himself a reporter, owning a Lafayette news station, but finds it more interesting to report on the misdeeds of those who do not deign to respect his inflated self-worth.

Robicheaux finds himself embroiled in a case that touches not only his own past—his brother once tried to save a prostitute in late-1950s Galveston—and the present of a serial killer who tortures women from the Baton Rouge area, dumping their mutilated bodies in South Louisiana and Robicheaux’s jurisdiction.

In the end, though, it is less about finding who the guilty party is and more an extended love letter to the past and the landscape of Acadiana that might exist outside of the machinations of corporations and the landed aristocracy.