August 1, 2018
A young woman is crucified near the Cyrpemort Point estate of Hollywood director Desmond Cormier, and Det. Dave Robicheaux finds neither the director nor his actor friend forthcoming.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from October 15, 2018
Despite a new slate of murders to investigate and a new love to provide hope, Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux provides still more evidence that nothing ever really changes in Louisiana's New Iberia Parish.Dave is feeling his age. Although his adopted daughter, Alafair, complains that he treats her like a child, he has to acknowledge that she's an attorney, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an adult who's presumably capable of managing her relationship with Lou Wexler, the producer of native son Desmond Cormier's latest film, now shooting in New Iberia and environs. Even as he's pointing out that Wexler's much too old for Alafair, Dave's embarrassed to have been smitten with his new partner, Bailey Ribbons, who's basically his daughter's age. All of which ought to take a back seat to the escape of convicted killer Hugo Tillinger from a prison hospital and the death of Lucinda Arceneaux, a minister's daughter who's been shot full of heroin and crucified in Weeks Bay. As usual, however, the case is deeply entangled with Dave's personal life, and the links are only tightened by the murders of ex-courtroom janitor Joe Molinari and Travis Lebeau, a confidential informant working for Dave's friend Cletus Purcel. It would be nice and neat to think that they'd all been killed by Hugo Tillinger--or by Chester "Smiley" Wimple, the wide-eyed, psychopathic avenger who's already crossed Dave's path (Robicheaux, 2018). In New Iberia, though, nothing is ever nice or neat, and even Desmond Cormier's dreamy fixation on the closing scene of the classic Western My Darling Clementine, which ought to be a sign of his nostalgic attachment to a noble image of mortality, ends up attracting him to Bailey Ribbons, whom he sees as another Clementine, placing himself along with virtually everyone else in the parish on a collision course with Dave.Many of the character types, plot devices, and oracular sentiments are familiar from Burke's earlier books. But the sentences are brand new, and the powerful emotional charge they carry feels piercingly new as well.
COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from November 5, 2018
In Edgar winner Burke’s masterly 22nd novel featuring Iberia Parish, La., detective Dave Robicheaux (after 2018’s Robicheaux), Hollywood director Desmond Cormier, whom Robicheaux knew 25 years earlier as a young man on the streets of New Orleans with big plans of heading to California to make movies, returns to Louisiana to shoot his next film. When the crucified body of a woman is found floating in the bay close to Cormier’s waterfront estate, Robicheaux investigates. Meanwhile, his pal Clete Purcel witnesses a man leap from a moving train into the bayou. Could the presence of this man, escaped convict Hugo Tillinger, somehow connect with Robicheaux’s case? Several other bodies turn up, all grotesquely staged to represent cards in a tarot deck. Robicheaux is convinced that Cormier’s film crew is involved, but he soon finds himself in a shadowy world of rogue cops, mobsters, and a childlike assassin named Smiley. With his lush, visionary prose and timeless literary themes of loss and redemption, Burke is in full command in this outing for his aging but still capable hero. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary.
Starred review from December 15, 2018
At 82, Burke just keeps getting better, his familiar theme of an idyllic past at war with a demon-drenched present taking on more subtle levels of meaning; his storied lyricism drawing on a new range of powerfully resonant minor chords; his now-iconic characters?Cajun police detective Dave Robicheaux and Dave's running buddy and guardian angel, Clete Purcell ("a heart as big as the world")?feeling weighed down by the burden of age yet at the same time emboldened by the knowledge that although "we would never change the world . . . the world would never change us." In this twenty-second Robicheaux novel, Dave is again threatened by forces from within and without, but this time, those forces interact to produce a kind of nuclear reaction on the lives of Robicheaux, his loved ones, and the inhabitants of New Iberia, Louisiana. It begins with the first of a series of ritualistic murders?a woman crucified and floating on a barge near the estate of a local boy made good, Hollywood director Desmond Cormier. As Dave and new partner Bailey Ribbons investigate, Dave becomes convinced that either Cormier or one of his entourage is deeply involved in the killings, causing strained relations with Dave's daughter, Alafair, now a novelist and screenwriter who is working on a film with Cormier. Further seasoning the stew, Dave finds himself attracted to the much-younger Bailey, filling his mind with "thoughts and desires that boded well for no one." And, yet, there are signs of hope here?even a glimmer of marriage between past and present?that give the novel a new dimension, but not before an all-stops-out finale with the power of cannon fire in the 1812 Overture. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A new Dave Robicheaux novel will always be a major publishing moment, and this one is bigger than most.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
Starred review from December 1, 2018
Det. Dave Robicheaux is haunted by ghosts, both his own and the one behind the brutal tarot-card murders. Native son Desmond Cormier is back from Hollywood, shooting part of his movie in the local swamplands of Iberia Parish, where locals are suddenly being killed in unusual ways--victims wear charms to ward off bayou evil, and signs of black magic and religious crusades mark the crime scenes. From Cormier, the religious zealot Hugo Tillinger, and Robicheaux's deadly hit-man nemesis "Smiley" Wimple, the murderer could be anyone. Robicheaux finds the blues at a crossroads--the clash between light and dark and the struggle to quell his inner demons. Will he be forced to repay the debt he owes the dead? VERDICT No one paints a picture of life in the sultry Louisiana bayou better than Burke. Readers drawn to the Cajun grit and Robicheaux's charm will love wading with him through the mists and Spanish moss of the swampland, peering into his psyche while hunting a psychopathic killer. [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/18.]--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.