Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke

I thought that Purple Cane Road was the first book of Burke's that I read - probably 25 years ago.  In my mind I've carried the image of a man crucified on the wall of an old shed.  Turns out, that is an image from Sunset Limited.  A haunting image.  Lush description. Complex characters. Mood.  Mood.  Mood.  (And not in a sunshine and unicorns’ way.)

As with all the Robicheaux novels, the plate is full of characters.  One movie producer, one director, one photographer, a shoe-shine man turned farmer of zinnias and chrysanthemums, his son who has one of the all-time best names (Cool Breeze Broussard), prostitutes, mafia mobsters, multiple killers/assassins, 2 sherriffs, good, bad, and ugly cops, two FBI agents - not to mention the aforementioned crucified man and Clete.  

Finding words to share with you from this novel was an exercise in restraint.  You can see in the photo I posted with this essay my list of ideas from THE FIRST HALF of the book.  

Settings:

Outside, the sun had risen into a line of storm clouds that looked like the brow of an angry man.

 

I walked down the wood steps into a deserted parking area, my face numb with alcohol, and stood in the silence and looked at a solitary live oak hung with Spanish moss, the cattle acreage that was gray with winter, the hollow dome of sky that possessed no color at all, and suddenly I felt the vastness of the world and all the promise it could hold for those who were still its children and had not severed their ties with the rest of the human family.

Characters:

Her hair was ash-blond, wispy and broken on the ends, her face big-boned and adversarial.  She was one of those you instinctively know have carefully nursed a reservoir of anger they draw upon as needed, in the same way others make use of daily prayer,

 

Then, as though I were no longer there, he did a handstand in the yard and walked on stiffened arms through the shade, the bottoms of his gym shoes extended out like the shoulders of a man with no head.

 

"What's the deal with this guy Boxleiter?"

"He's a psychopath with loyalties," I said.

Descriptions:  (aka fun with similies...)

The witness said, "Their guns just kept popping.  It looked like somebody was blowing chunks out of a watermelon."

 

"You hide your feelings like a cat in a spin dryer."

 

His accent was deep down in his breathing passages, like heated air breaking through the top of oatmeal.

 

...his expression as meaningless as a jack-o-lantern's.

 

In that moment she knew the heartbreaking twilight-infused beauty that the earth can offer, that we waste as easily as we tear pages from a calendar...

Mood: 

The eastern horizon was strung with rain clouds and the sun should have risen out of the water like a mist-shrouded egg yolk, but it didn't.  Its red light mushroomed along the horizon, then rose into the sky in a cross, burning in the center, as though fire were trying to take the shape of a man, and the water turned the heavy dark color of blood.

One final beautiful sentence: 

But I never underestimated the power of the rain or the potential of the dead, or denied them their presence in the world.