Robicheaux

September 1, 2017

Popular Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux tangles with mighty mob boss Tony Nemo; celebrity author Levon Broussard, whose Hollywood profits intrigue Tony; and New Orleans golden boy Jimmy Nightengale, whom Tony wants to make a U.S. senator. From the two-time Edgar Award winner.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 27, 2017
Burke (Light of the World) once again features Dave Robicheaux—detective, veteran, widower, father, alcoholic—in this enthralling yet grim novel of crime, hate, and tragedy. Robicheaux may be at home in New Iberia, La., but he’s not safe from suspicion and self-doubt when the man who killed his wife is murdered. Together with his best friend, PI Clete Purcell, Robicheaux seeks truth, no matter how incriminating, even as more bodies fall and mysteries twine together. The cast is Shakespearean in its variety: a demagogue, a novelist, the mob, good cops and bad, victims of hubris and hate, and ghosts aplenty. No one here is blameless amid white supremacy, bigotry, misogyny, child abuse, flourishing sex and drug trades, and deep socioeconomic inequity, and Robicheaux and Clete never shy away from confronting what they see as the world’s evils. But as the stakes get higher, the friends—who are more than happy to risk themselves—must decide what it will take to protect those they love and respect. Along the way, Burke investigates accusations of rape, corporate colonialism, and Southern nostalgia, not always without his own bias. The novel’s murders and lies—both committed with unsettling smiles—will captivate, start to finish.

November 15, 2017
Five years after his last case in far-off Montana (Light of the World, 2013), sometime sheriff's detective Dave Robicheaux returns to Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for another 15 rounds of high-fatality crime, alcohol-soaked ruminations, and heaven-storming prose.Jimmy Nightingale's silver-tongued charm may destine him for the Senate, but he's certainly mixing with some dark powers along the way, most notably his backer Fat Tony Nemo, who's made his bones in politics, porn, and drugs. As part owner of a financial company that's issued a reverse mortgage on the house owned by Dave's old buddy Clete Purcel, Tony ends up with a fistful of Clete's markers, squeezes him hard, and isn't impressed when Dave borrows money of his own to retire the debt. Jimmy himself seems invincible until he's accused of rape by Rowena Broussard, the painter and photographer whose husband is eccentric novelist Levon Broussard, whose Civil War fiction Tony would love to film. When Jimmy indignantly protests his innocence, Dave points out, "People do things when they're drunk that they would never do sober." And Dave should know, because he himself is suspected of getting blasted and killing T. J. Dartez, the truck driver who accidentally killed Molly, Dave's third wife. Listening to Clete talk about Kevin Penny, the abusive father who's run off after getting bailed out of jail, Dave little knows how deeply implicated Penny will be in the two other cases he's entangled in. Fans of Burke's fiction who recognize the familiar types he evokes so powerfully--the corrupt politician, the plausible mobster, the attractive but damaged woman, the bully who preys on the weak and helpless--eagerly await the arrival of another stock character, the crazy hired killer who'll purify the landscape as remorselessly as a flash fire, and immediately recognize him in the person of Chester "Smiley" Wimple, who takes it upon himself to kill everyone who needs killing and a few who maybe don't.Despite a plot and a cast of characters formulaic by Burke's standards (though wholly original for anyone else), the intimations of mortality that have hovered over this series for 30 years have never been sharper or sadder.

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March 5, 2018
Voice actor Patton does not disappoint in his reading of Burke’s 21st novel featuring Dave Robicheaux, the deputy sheriff of New Iberia, La. Dave is coming to grips with his wife’s death in a car crash. When the driver responsible for the crash is murdered on the same night Dave drinks himself unconscious, he becomes the prime suspect. This is but one story line in a book filled with them, as well as a large cast, including a narcissistic golden boy who’s testing the political waters; a legendary novelist whose best book is being turned into a movie produced by a loathsome, dying mobster; and Dave’s novelist daughter, Alifair, who’s writing the screenplay. Then there’s Chester (“Call Me Smiley”) Wimple, a seemingly simpleminded hit man who’s effectively ridding Louisiana of its evildoers. Reader Patton’s honeyed Southern accent proves a perfect instrument for presenting narrator Dave’s poetic descriptions of bayou landscapes as well as Dave’s melancholy moods. The would-be politician speaks with the blissful confidence of the very wealthy, the novelist’s approach is drily above it all, and the mobster sounds hoarse and very ill. They all take a rear seat when it comes to Patton’s creative interpretation of Smiley—lisping, babyish, singsongy, and, when tested, chillingly homicidal. This is another winning performance from Patton. A Simon & Schuster hardcover.

Starred review from January 1, 2018
The demons that haunt Dave Robicheaux are raising havoc again, but they're invading more than his dreams in this twenty-first installment in Burke's celebrated series. Reeling from the sudden death of his wife, Molly, in a car accident, the New Iberia, Louisiana, police detective falls off the wagon and, while drunk, may have killed the man he holds responsible for Molly's death may have because the alcohol-induced blackout has left him with no memory of the night in question. Robicheaux's other demon, the pasthis conflicted sense of his Cajun heritage set against the blood-stained legacy of the Civil Waris also intensifying its grip on his consciousness. The battalion of Confederate soldiers the boys in butternut that he occasionally sees in the mists hanging over the bayou are now inviting him into the next world. This world has its demons, too, in the form of a senatorial candidate with a dark past, a revered novelist whose own butternut visions are spiraling out of control, and a psychotic killer on a mission of death. Fighting his internal and external battles, Robicheaux turns to his longtime running mate, Clete Purcell, every bit as demon-ravaged as Dave, and, together, the former Bobbsey Twins of the New Orleans PD set out to take no prisoners. Burke is known for his lyrical, deeply melancholic prose, and once again it permeates every page of this profoundly elegiac novel. We tend to forget, however, that he is no slouch at plotting and at constructing hold-your-breath action scenes. Both traits are in evidence here, the former in the way he nimbly juggles the multiple strands of his narrative, the latter in the barn-burner of a climax thatevoking The Manchurian Candidatehas the senator preparing to give a speech while the psycho positions himself for a kill shot, and Dave and Clete give chase. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Burke is one of crime fiction's most revered authors, a two-time Edgar winner whose place on the NYT best-seller list has been reserved in perpetuity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)