Showing results by author "James Lee Burke" in All Categories

Dave Robicheaux has been warned that he's on somebody's hit list, and now the homicide detective is trying to discover just who that is before he ends up dead. Meanwhile he has taken on the murder investigation of a young black girl found dead in the Bayou swamp. Robicheaux uncovers a web of corruption that leads him to a terrifying confrontation with the one horror he fears most of all.

Billy Bob Holland is a lawyer for the people of sunbaked Deaf Smith, in southern Texas. Although occasionally he is haunted by memories of a violent past, his life is serene—until a local guitarist, Lucas Smothers, lands in jail for raping and murdering a young woman. As Billy Bob gathers information to defend him, the evidence soon points to the son of a wealthy local businessman. In the ensuing battle, money is pitted against the law. But a deeper struggle also arises, for Lucas is Billy Bob’s illegitimate son.

Hack Holland is a product of the South, both old and new. Hard-drinking ex-POW and wealthy, progressive Democrat, he stands in the long shadow cast by his ancestors. When Holland's candidacy for a congressional seat brings him increasingly into conflict with those around him, his almost unwitting involvement with a violent civil rights conflict forces him to reassess his future - and his past....

In 1934, 16-year-old Weldon Avery Holland confronts the notorious outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, resulting with Weldon firing a gun, unsure whether it hit its mark. Ten years later Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland barely survives the Battle of the Bulge, in the process saving the lives of Hershel Pine and a young prisoner of war, Rosita Lowenstein - a woman who holds the same romantic power over him as the beautiful Bonnie Parker.

Toussaint Boudreaux, a black docker in New Orleans, moonlights as a prize-fighter in the hope of a better life. J. P. Winfield, a hick with a gift for 12-string guitar, finds his break into showbiz leads to the flipside of the American dream. And Avery Broussard, descendant of an aristocratic French family, runs whiskey after what remains of his land is repossessed....

It is a rainy late-summer's night in New Orleans. Detective Dave Robicheaux is about to confront the man who may have savagely assaulted his friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest who's always at the center of controversy. But things are never as they seem and soon Robicheaux is back in New Iberia, probing a car crash that killed three teenage girls. A grief-crazed father and a maniacal assassin are just a few of the characters Robicheaux meets as he is drawn deeper into a web of secrets and violence.

House of the Rising Sun is an epic tale of love, loss, betrayal, vengeance and retribution that follows Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland on his journey to reunite with his estranged son, Ishmael. After a violent encounter that leaves four Mexican soldiers dead, Hackberry escapes the country in possession of a stolen artifact, earning the ire of a bloodthirsty Austrian arms dealer who will do anything to recapture his prize, believed to be the mythic cup of Christ.

Clete Purcel—private investigator, ex-member of the New Orleans Police Department, and war veteran with a hard shell and just a few soft spots—is Dave Robicheaux's longtime friend and partner in detective work. But he has a troubled past. When Clete leaves his car at the local car wash, only to return to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade from Mexican cartels to Louisiana, it feels personal—his grandniece died of a fentanyl overdose, and his fists curl when he thinks of the dealers who sold it.

Dave Robicheaux still feels guilt over a tragic event he wasn't sober enough to prevent. Dallas Klein, a gambling addict and buddy, was killed in an armed robbery he'd been forced to engineer. Two decades later, several incidents in Dave's life in Iberia Parish link to those involved. First he meets Dallas' daughter, Trish, who keeps odd company and is blackballed by the local casinos. Then the supposed suicide of a young girl appears to be connected to the man Dallas owed money to.

Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song 'Creole Belle' on it. Then she disappears. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile, there has been an oil well blowout on the Gulf, threatening the cherished environs of the bayous.

The call from ex-Klansman Aaron Crown couldn't have been more unexpected. Sentenced to forty years for the decades-old shooting of a civil rights activist, Crown should have been out of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for good. Election candidate Buford LaRose wants Detective Dave Robicheaux to ignore Aaron's calls, promising Robicheaux a lucrative job when he makes governor. Worse still, Buford's wife, Karyn, seems unhealthily interested in getting very close to Robicheaux—just like old times. The LaRoses, each for their own reasons, want Crown's case buried.

The forty-year-old crucifixion of a prominent labor leader named Jack Flynn remains an unsolved atrocity that has never been forgotten in New Iberia, Louisiana. When Flynn's daughter Megan, a photojournalist drawn to controversial subjects, returns to the site of her father's murder, it quickly becomes clear that her family's bloodstained past will not stay buried. Megan gives her old friend Dave Robicheaux a tip about a small-time criminal named Cool Breeze Broussard, scarcely suspecting that the seemingly innocuous case will lead Robicheaux and his partner into the midst of deadly conspiracy. Combining brilliant prose, crackling suspense, and an exquisite sense of character and place, Sunset Limited is a wrenching tale of historic violence and soiled redemption that reveals America's finest novelist at his masterful best.

The merciless Shondell and Balangie families are long-time enemies in the New Iberia criminal underworld. Yet their youngest heirs, Johnny and Isolde - star-crossed teenage lovers - have run away together. As he tried to uncover the reasons why, Robicheaux gets too close to both Isolde's mother and her father's mistress. In retribution, Balangie - as jealous as he is cruel - hires an assassin to hunt Robicheaux and his long-time partner, Clete Purcel.

Hurricane Katrina has transformed New Orleans into a violent wasteland. Criminals capitalise on the devastation as survivors wait for help that never comes. David Robicheaux - his city in ruins -- is tasked with investigating the murder of a pair of looters: is it a simple case of 'stand-your-ground', or something altogether darker? The dead men's accomplice holds the key but he has disappeared to escape the people hunting him. As Robicheaux uncovers a brutal catalogue of greed, torture and murder, his own family is threatened.

Sweet Pea Chaisson has parked his pink Cadillac convertible full of hookers in the parking lot of a convenience store in Spanish Lake, Louisiana. He’s causing a commotion, but not because of the car or the women—his mother’s coffin is sticking out of the trunk. Welcome again to the world of Dave Robicheaux, the Bayou cop who works murder cases and a 12-step program with a unique mixture of gentleness and suppressed rage. On his beat in Iberia Parrish, ancient burial sites, a Vietnam war diary, an old affair, and a street hustler are stirring up trouble.

Dave Robicheaux and his ex-partner head to Montana for a break. But they are soon dragged in to an investigation into the deaths of a couple of hikers, which suggests that a serial killer may be at work, while an escaped jailbird and his former tormentor are locked in a battle that is connected to a terrible family secret.

Detective Dave Robicheaux, his wife Molly and daughter Alafair are vacationing in Montana. But evil, it seems, has followed them into this wild paradise. Someone is stalking Alafair, and Dave begins to suspect that it's a convicted serial killer she interviewed two years ago - even though he’s supposed to be dead. Is Alafair the target of a depraved serial killer, or has she unwittingly crossed paths with a murderous psychopath closer to home?

In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The retreating Confederate army is being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous.

Dave Robicheaux is trying to put a life of violence and crime behind him, leaving homicide to run a boat-rental business in Louisiana's bayou country. One day while fishing in the Gulf with his wife Annie, he witnesses an event that will change his life forever. A two-engine plane suddenly crashes into the sea and Robicheaux dives down to the wreckage to find four bodies and one survivor; a little girl miraculously trapped in a pocket of air. When the authorities insist only three bodies were recovered from the plane, Robicheaux decides to investigate the mystery of the missing man.

Hackberry Holland is a man haunted by a chequered and traumatic past. A former POW from the Korean War, he has left everything behind to become sheriff of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas. Hack soon finds himself dealing with more than just his own demons when nine dead prostitutes are dug up behind a run-down church. The search for justice - and revenge - pits Hack against hired guns, drug dealers, and a psychotic killer known as The Preacher.