Cover image of "Dixie City Jam" by James Lee Burke, a novel about neo-Nazis

First a prominent New Orleans Jewish businessman, then a rival, an Irish-American mobster, offer rewards to Dave Robicheaux to locate a Nazi submarine sunken off the coast of Louisiana. Then neo-Nazis enter the scene, with attendant violence, and Robicheaux’s old partner in the New Orleans Police Department, Clete Purcell, brings his own unique brand of violence to the ever more complicated situation. The principal themes that emerge in this engrossing novel are the rise of neo-Nazism, police corruption in New Orleans, alcoholism, the binding ties of marriage, and the brutality that dominates crime in both black and white communities. James Lee Burke is a supremely talented writer.

Historical background

The plot in Dixie City Jam revolves around a little-known historical event in 1942. The Nazi submarine, U-166, had sunk four ships totaling more than 7,500 tons in gross weight while on patrol in the Gulf of Mexico. Less than two months after arriving in the Gulf, the sub itself was sunk with a crew of forty-eight by a U.S. Navy patrol craft. The wreck was located in 2001, seven years after the novel was published.


Dixie City Jam (Dave Robicheaux #7) by James Lee Burke ★★★★★


About the author

Gorgeous prose, nerve-rattling violence, vivid sex scenes, and extremely complex characters distinguish James Lee Burke‘s detective novels featuring deputy sheriff Dave Robicheaux of New Iberia Parish, Louisiana. Burke brings lyrical and descriptive skills to bear on this genre that rival the best of “serious” Southern literature. Beginning in 1987, he has written twenty Dave Robicheaux novels, fifteen other novels, and two collections of short stories. As Wikipedia reveals, “Stephen King said in a 2015 interview that he reads Burke because he is a “gorgeous prose stylist.”

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