A Private Cathedral

The Shondell and Balangie families are old families, big players in the criminal underworld in Louisiana. In Romeo and Juliet fashion, Johnny Shondell and Isolde Balangie have fallen in love. They run away when Isolde is given to Mark Shondell, Johnny's uncle, as a sex slave. When he learns about the transaction between Mark Shondell and Adonis Balangie, Isolde's father, Dave Robicheaux finds himself walking straight into the middle of a maelstrom. He's sticking his nose in family business and customs that go back hundreds of years, and Mark Shondell doesn't particularly like it. Trouble follows.

Dave Robicheaux has seen his share of hard knocks. Two wives untimely deceased, in and out of more than one police department, a recovering alcoholic, he still fights the good fight. He may be a bit rough around the edges, but he's one of the good guys. He and his best friend, Clete Purcel, are in it up to their eyeballs trying to take down Mark Shondell and a centuries-old custom of trafficking between the Shondell and Balangie families. Add to the mix a supernatural centuries-old assassin called a revelator who appears in a ghost ship, and this is one mess Dave and Clete might not make their way out of.

A Private Cathedral is full of suspense, action, family drama, the unexplainable, and a little sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's hard to pin down allegiances sometimes, and there's always the possibility that someone may switch sides. And James Lee Burke tells the story with his characteristic glorious, and sometimes philosophical, turns of phrase.

“I wondered if Pietro, the Balangie patriarch, believed he was part of it, reborn in the New Country, safe from poverty, forgiven for the sins he committed out of necessity in the service of a capitalistic God.”

“It was like waking from a bad dream as a child only to find, as the sunlight crept into the room and drove away the shadows, that your nocturnal fears were justified and that the creatures you couldn't flee in your sleep waited for you in the blooming of the day.”

“It was one of those rare moments when the ephemerality of the human condition becomes inescapable and you want to smash your watch and shed your mortal fastenings and embrace the rain and the wind and rise into the storm and become one with its destructive magnificence.”

It doesn't take long to get hooked into this story, and once you do, it pulls you along. The tale is compelling, and eerie, and you aren't sure where you're going to end up until Burke ties all the threads together. There is betrayal and grief, loss and redemption. Buckle up and get to reading.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of A Private Cathedral through NetGalley. All opinions here are mine, and I don't say nice things about books that I don't like.