Last Car to Elysian Fields

By: James Lee Burke

Narrated by: Mark Hammer

Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. To return there means visiting old ghosts and opening himself to new, yet familiar, dangers.

When Robicheaux, a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he returns to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially.

Meanwhile, back in New Iberia, three local teenage girls are killed in a drunk driving accident. Robicheaux traces the source of the liquor to one of New Iberia's "daiquiri windows," places that sell mixed drinks through drive-by windows. When the owner of the drive-through operation is brutally murdered, Robicheaux immediately suspects the grief-crazed father of the dead teen driver. But his assumption is challenged when the murder weapon turns up belonging to someone else. Tying together these disparate threads is a maniacal killer named Max Coll, a deeply haunted hit man sent to New Orleans to finish the job of father Dolan.

©2003 James Lee Burke (P)2003 Simon & Schuster Inc. All Rights Reserved. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Critic reviews

"James Lee Burke is at the top of his game." (The New York Times)
"This is an outstanding entry in an excellent series" (Publishers Weekly)

Last Car to Elysian Fields

Love all of James Lee Burke's books. This one though was hard to get into. I agree with some of the other reviews, in that the narration was difficult to follow, most characters dialect being slurred too much.

Sniff and gurgle

Yikes! Get that reader some antihistamines and a box of Kleenex. I gave up after an hour. I kept clearing my throat in hopes that the reader would do the same, but no such luck.

Last Car to Elysian Fields

I found this book to be very confusing. The narrator has a wonderful grasp of the Louisiana/Cajun dialect, but causes the book, already moving at the speed of death, to slow down even more. Its hard to determine what the book is about. I feel that I have one of my monthly choices, and Im very disappointed.

Listened 10 minutes

Can't even talk about books content. Listened 10 min. and could not continue. Narrator sound like he had a pound of snot in his sinus. Mumbled words, terrible articulation. He sounds on his death bed or drunk. And the greatest sin in audio books..."he said","she said","I said" in every sentence. Only 2nd book in over 100 purchased that I couldn't listen to. He read for Jolie Blon and I liked it, so I don't know why this was as it was.

Narrator doesn't have a clue how a Cajun sounds.

To start with, I am from New Orleans and I know what a Cajun sounds like. This narrator no more sounds like a Cajun than Donald Duck. His tone is dull and slow, very boring. Maybe the story is good but I can't continue to listen to the narrator. In one of the other reviews someone from PA states that the narrator has a great grasp for the Cajun dialect. This person is very wrong. I invite anyone to come to New Orleans and go into Cajun country and listen.

Hard to listen to.

While the story seems to be Burke at his best, it is hard to listen to this Hammer read. I definitely prefer Will Patton's readings of previous Burke novels. I find it hard to understand Hammer a lot of the time and the characters voices seem to run together. Hammer seems to be trying way too hard to sound Cajun. I hope the next one is better.

Spit it out

I loved the story and couldn't stop listening even though the narrator was at times barely understandable. It often seemed like he had a speech impediment. I will never buy another title he narrates. I love James lee Burke's work, so I sincerely hope a replacement can be found.

Slow, Slow, Slow

This was my first Burke novel. The pace is slow and even a slower narrator. Although the accent may be southern Louisiana, every character sounds the same. All the females sing bass in the choir. The only character you can distinguish is the Irishman. It may have been a good 10 hour book that was stretched to 15 hours of bordom by a slow narrator. I will keep an eye out for Mark Hammer and avoid any books he narrates.

This was the first book in 5 months that I was disapponited in the narrator. Most others do a terrific job.

Crap!

It's another one of those "I hate the South books" in which all blacks are innocent saints tortured by all whites (except the protagonist, of course). All white women are either naive snobs or crack whores. And yet, the author says people who call Southerners racist, "have their own agenda." Duh! That's you, Burke! When someone's phone is tapped to capture a terrorist, he is told it is the, "George Bush Era." Not the "Osama Bin Laden Era", not the "9/11 Era", not the "War on Terror Era." I am furious. I have sat through 3/4 of this racist, facist crap and I can't take it anymore.

Elysian Fields

Love...Love ...Love James Lee Burke's writing and his characterizations. The narration on this particular book, though, was brutal. Very slow and slurry readings and very hard to understand. I had to keep backing it up to understand pivitol messages.