Likely Story

By John Skow

JAMES LEE BURKE, WHO WRITES swampy, phosphorescent thrillers about New Orleans (A Stained White Radiance, for example), suffers from a terrible and mostly undeserved reputation for fine writing. Perhaps to confront this slur head-on, he throws in some undeniably lavender flourishes on page 5 of his new best seller, Dixie City Jam (Hyperion; 367 pages; $22.95). "The wind was hot and sere," he reports. And "the sun looked like a white flame trapped inside the dead water." And "an occasional fork of lightning, like silver threads trembling inside the clouds." It's a weather bulletin delivered by choiring angels.

The author manages, more or less, to stay off the metaphorical sauce for the rest of the book. But other problems bedevil the story, which is the seventh of Burke's mysteries about Dave Robicheaux, a cop who belongs to A.A. The series shows signs of wear. Other Burke plots have been fanciful, but this one is too big and operatic for anything but a James Bond thunderation.

Robicheaux, a down-home sort of fellow who runs a bait shop when he's off duty, is absurdly overmatched by the villains, a brother-sister pair of supernaturally brilliant, grotesquely evil neo-Nazis. Among the bit players are several Mafia capos who appear onstage every couple of chapters like burlesque clowns, for no purpose except to be kicked in the pants by Robicheaux and his ex-cop friend Clete; and a pair of career criminals, one Jewish and one Irish, who have been feuding since high school but who will kiss and make up in time to explain No, no, that authentic 1942 German submarine that keeps threatening to surface off Louisiana is beyond any explanation except a looming deadline.