This is the best Dave Robicheaux novel to come up the bayou in some time. Lately Dave has spent much of each novel driving back and forth between New Orleans and New Iberia, stopping to meditate about the Vietnam War, the Confederacy, and the legacy of slavery buried under the rich delta soil, like Tennessee Williams with a badge. He scolds people for smoking, hitting children, or swearing, meanwhile bodies pile up at each end of his journey, while he and Clete Purcell go through the world's most delayed mid-life crises.
Burke has sharpened things up here, back to the sort of buzz we felt when Dave's personal demons weren't overpowering the story, and when the past sins which inevitably play a huge part in the present crimes actually reverberated directly. This time they get more and more complicated, until potential murderers appear to be queuing up and taking numbers; meanwhile Clete is tied up with the daughter of an old friend of Dave's, murdered when he was in his drunken days/daze, and she is out to wreak some sort of revenge. If anything, Burke has overwrought his plot; there are so many plot strands and characters rushing on and off stage that he hardly has time to develop them and indulge in Dave's eternal internal monologues as well. If anything, that sub-plot, involving Trish Klein, daughter of the murdered Dallas, isn't fleshed out fully enough; Clete spends a lot of time offstage, destroying whatever furniture may be stored there. Meanwhile, Dave's caught up with gangsters and their fraternity boy sons, and with a televangelist who really ought to figure more fully in the novel too.
That Burke can build such a story, and resolve it with such aplomb, while hiding so much of it behind his trademark reveries is a feat of just exceptional writing ability. The final element which sits off-stage through most of the tale is Hurricane Katrina. In fact, like Clete's escapades, it appears only second-hand, has no affect on the story, nor on Dave's ex-nun wife, three-legged pet racoon, or cat. Sometimes it's like a Disney funny animal character has decided to drink and wandered into a gothic film noir set. When it works, it works, and this one works.
