America's most acclaimed crime writer returns to Louisiana with one of the best-loved detectives in fiction, Dave Robicheaux.
In the summer of 1958, Dave Robicheaux and his half-brother Jimmie are just out of high school. Jimmie and Dave get work with an oil company, laying out rubber cables in the bays and mosquito-infested swamps all along the Louisiana-Texas coastline. But on the Fourth of July, change approaches in the form of Ida Durbin, a sweet-faced young woman with a lovely voice and a mandolin. Jimmie falls instantly in love with her. But Ida's not free to love - she's a prostitute, in hock to a brutal man called Kale. Jimmie agrees to meet Ida at the bus depot, ready for the road to Mexico. But Ida never shows.
That was many years ago. Now, an older, well-worn Dave walks into Baptist Hospital to visit a man called Troy Bordelon, who wants to free himself of a dark secret before he dies. A bully and a sadist, he has a lot to confess to - but he chooses to talk about a young girl, a prostitute who he glimpsed briefly as a kid, bloodied and beaten, tied to a chair in his uncle's house.
Praise for one of the great American crime writers, James Lee Burke:
'James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed.' Michael Connelly
'A gorgeous prose stylist.' Stephen King
'Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced.' Daily Mail
Fans of Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Don Winslow will love James Lee Burke:
Dave Robicheaux Series
The Neon Rain
Heaven's Prisoners
Black Cherry Blues
A Morning for Flamingos
A Stained White Radiance
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
Dixie City Jam
Burning Angel
Cadillac Jukebox
Sunset Limited
Purple Cane Road
Jolie Blon's Bounce
Last Car to Elysian Fields
Crusader's Cross
Pegasus Descending
The Tin Roof Blowdown
Swan Peak
The Glass Rainbow
Creole Belle
Light of the World
Robicheaux
Hackberry Holland Series
Lay Down My Sword and Shield
Rain Gods
Feast Day of Fools
House of the Rising Sun
Billy Bob Holland Series
Cimarron Rose
Heartwood
Bitterroot
In The Moon of Red Ponies
* Each James Lee Burke novel can be read as a standalone or in series order *