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.

Megan and Cisco Flynn are back in town. Nobody had ever been caught for the Klan murder of their father, Jack, and Detective Dave Robicheaux knows that trouble cannot be far behind. Particularly when the Flynns get mixed up with the case of a small-time hustler named Cool Breeze Broussard. As the Flynns find themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, Robicheaux is trying to keep Cool Breeze alive. Something ties Breeze to the Flynns, and all three of them to local plantation magnate Archer Terrebonne. Something long past is poisoning all their lives, bringing death in its wake.

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.

When Dave Robicheaux gets the call saying his ex-partner Clete Purcel is in jail for felony assault and resisting arrest, bailing him out is instinctive. After all, Clete is the man who saved Dave's life. But Clete's latest escapade isn't just worrying because it shows his demons are gaining the upper hand; it also brings some of those demons into Dave's life, in the most personal way possible...

Dave Robicheaux is a haunted man. Between his recurrent nightmares, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he's investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave's beloved wife. As he works to clear his name, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves.

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.

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.

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.

When a Nazi submarine is discovered lying in 60 feet of water off the Louisiana coast, some troubled ghosts are ready to be released. A local businessman is offering Detective Dave Robicheaux big money to bring the wreck to the surface, but he is not the only one after the submarine and its mysterious cargo. Neo-Nazis are on the march in New Orleans, a new spirit of hatred is abroad, and its terrifying embodiment, an icy psychopath called Will Buchalter, is stalking Robicheaux's wife.

Trouble is rising in Montana's Bitterroot Valley and only one man is willing to stop it.... Frank Riordan is waging a one-man campaign to shut down the local pulp mill that is polluting the air and devastating the environment; tensions are growing, and the only man who can help already has troubles of his own. Having served time for accidentally killing a man Iry Paret is making a fresh start on Frank's ranch, where he meets a dynamic and beautiful woman who will test the limits of Iry's loyalty to his friends.

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.

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.

For Dave Robicheaux, life in Louisiana is filled with haunting memories of the past - images from Vietnam, the violent streets of New Orleans, and his own troubled youth. In Crusader's Cross, a deathbed confession from an old schoolmate resurrects a story of injustice, the murder of a young woman, and a time in Robicheaux's life he has tried to forget. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin. It was back in the innocent days of the 1950s when Robicheaux and his brother, Jimmie, met heron a Galveston beach.

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.

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.

When Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers disturbing secrets from his mother's past, he embarks on a journey through a murky world of vice, politics and murder. Robicheaux has been told that his mother, Mae, was a hooker and ended her life drowned in a mud puddle by two cops working for the Mob. As Robichaeux and his partner hunt for the killers, they hook up with a door-to-door salesman turned state governor, a psychotic hit-man, and the owner of the mansion at Purple Cane Road - who knows rather too much about Robichaeux's wife....

Dave Robicheaux had begun to put the pieces of his broken life together again when an old friend turned up on his doorstep, dredging up old memories and new threats.

Sheriff Hackberry Holland patrols a small Southwest Texas border town with a deep and abiding respect for the citizens in his care. Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his deputy, Pam Tibbs, a woman many decades his junior, Hackberry feeds off the deeds of evil men to keep his own demons at bay.

On its surface life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed. When Aaron spots the beautiful Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, he inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob. He also discovers he must find the courage his father had found as an American soldier in the Great War

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....