I discovered Burke back in the early 1990s, and he has been one of my favorite authors ever since. His Dave Robicheaux novels are poetry and blood, set in the grim bayous of Louisiana, the streets of New Iberia, and the alleys of New Orleans. Everywhere Robicheaux goes, the whiff of Cajun food and the lilt of the language spoken by the early French settlers accompany him.
Pegasus Descending is, as these novels always are, a masterful suspense story whose plot alone will keep you up late. Added to that are the brilliant and quirky characters of Robicheaux, who is the best of the hard-boiled-cop-turned-sensitive dectectives so popular in fiction now; the bizarre and likable Clete; Robicheaux’s third wife who is a former nun; and Robicheaux’s boss, the sexually ambivalent Sheriff Helen Soileau. The apparent suicide of a young girl in the old mill district of New Iberia bothers Robicheaux. So does the appearance in the area of the daughter of an old drinking buddy whom he saw shot to death in Florida 20 years before. Local corruption, organized crime, gambling, and fraternity parties from hell all combine before the dramatic ending. The only things that get better than this book by Burke are other books by Burke. I mean, really, who can resist reading books with titles like In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, A Stained White Radiance, and A Morning for Flamingos?
Pegasus Descending is, as these novels always are, a masterful suspense story whose plot alone will keep you up late. Added to that are the brilliant and quirky characters of Robicheaux, who is the best of the hard-boiled-cop-turned-sensitive dectectives so popular in fiction now; the bizarre and likable Clete; Robicheaux’s third wife who is a former nun; and Robicheaux’s boss, the sexually ambivalent Sheriff Helen Soileau. The apparent suicide of a young girl in the old mill district of New Iberia bothers Robicheaux. So does the appearance in the area of the daughter of an old drinking buddy whom he saw shot to death in Florida 20 years before. Local corruption, organized crime, gambling, and fraternity parties from hell all combine before the dramatic ending. The only things that get better than this book by Burke are other books by Burke. I mean, really, who can resist reading books with titles like In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, A Stained White Radiance, and A Morning for Flamingos?
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