Books in This Series 1
More by James Lee Burke
This is James Lee Burke's latest mystery featuring Dave Robicheaux. It is also much more than that. The story begins with the shooting of two would-be looters in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and then follows a motley group of characters - from street thugs to a big-time mob boss, from a junkie priest to a sadistic psychopath - as their stories converge on a cache of stolen diamonds, while the storm turns the Big Easy into a lawless wasteland of apocalyptic proportions. The nightmarish landscape created by Katrina seems the perfect setting for Burke's almost Biblical visions of good and evil - it is as if he had to wait for this disaster to find the occasion to match his emotionally supercharged prose. You can feel the undercurrents of rage and pain beneath the narrative, making this not only his most personal and deeply felt book for some time, but quite possibly his best novel to date. This is not just a superb crime novel, it is potentially THE fictional chronicle of a disaster whose human dimensions America is still struggling to process.
Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with killers and hustlers, with police brass, and with the bottle. Lost without his wife's love, Robicheaux's haunted soul mirrors the intensity and dusky mystery of New Orleans' French Quarter -- the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down a subterranean criminal world and come to terms with his own bruised heart in order to survive.
Book #3 from the series: Dave Robicheaux
BACK IN THE UNDERWORLD HE TRIED TO LEAVE BEHIND
Haunted by the memory of his wife's murder and his father's untimely death, ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux spends his days in a fish-and-tackle business. But when an old friend makes a surprise appearance, Robicheaux finds himself thrust back into the violent world of Mafia goons and wily federal agents. From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands, Robicheaux is running from the bottle, a homicide rap, a professional killer and the demons of his past.
Rich with fascinating characters and dramatic plot twists, James Lee Burke and his Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux recall the best of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe -- tough, complex and thoroughly entertaining.