A review by nigellicus
Robicheaux by James Lee Burke

5.0

Dave has lost another wife and is sinking into grief and despair and has even taken to the demon drink again. When the man who killed Molly turns up dead on the same night Dave has a drunken blackout and wakes up with bloody knuckles, things start to get even more uncomfortable for him. There's also a New Orleans gangster looking to make a film, a rich and venal local character on the rise, a novelist and his wife, and a nasty lowlife with an abused son, a set of characters firing around the place in a complex web of connections Dave has to chart, willingly or no, helped by the steadfast but volatile Clete Purcell.

If mortality starts to weigh any heavier on these books they'll turn into Ingmar Bergman films, but the thriller element never flags, the strange twists of fate and design and personality that have to be explored to plumb the various mysteries are Burke's absolute stock in trade, and never less than riveting.