Showing results by author "James Burke" in All Categories

When a Nazi submarine is discovered lying in sixty 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.

In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The retreating Confederate army is being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher, dodging the local constable and the slavecatchers that prowl the bayous.

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.

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.

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.

Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song 'Creole Belle' on it. Then she disappears. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile, there has been an oil well blowout on the Gulf, threatening the cherished environs of the bayous.

The call from ex-Klansman Aaron Crown couldn't have been more unexpected. Sentenced to forty years for the decades-old shooting of a civil rights activist, Crown should have been out of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for good. Election candidate Buford LaRose wants Detective Dave Robicheaux to ignore Aaron's calls, promising Robicheaux a lucrative job when he makes governor. Worse still, Buford's wife, Karyn, seems unhealthily interested in getting very close to Robicheaux—just like old times. The LaRoses, each for their own reasons, want Crown's case buried.

Sweet Pea Chaisson has parked his pink Cadillac convertible full of hookers in the parking lot of a convenience store in Spanish Lake, Louisiana. He’s causing a commotion, but not because of the car or the women—his mother’s coffin is sticking out of the trunk. Welcome again to the world of Dave Robicheaux, the Bayou cop who works murder cases and a 12-step program with a unique mixture of gentleness and suppressed rage. On his beat in Iberia Parrish, ancient burial sites, a Vietnam war diary, an old affair, and a street hustler are stirring up trouble.

Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honour her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron's only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted Horse, a no-nonsense woman who harbours some powerful secrets in her cellar.

Son Holland arrived in the Louisiana penal camp determined not to spend the rest of his days suffering in a chain gang - but he didn't imagine for one minute that in order to escape he would need to kill a man. Terrified for his life, he flees the state across the river to Texas, taking with him a beautiful Indian squaw and a fellow prisoner. And as they make their way towards General Houston's infamous Texas Rangers they find themselves in the midst of the final tragic battle for the Alamo.

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.

Detective Dave Robicheaux is fighting his demons to overcome his toughest case yet. There's something off about the relationship between mob boss Tony Nemo, local author Levon Broussard and New Orleans poster boy Jimmy Nightengale, and after a vicious assault, it's up to Robicheaux to uncover the truth. Complicating matters is the sudden death of T. J. Dartez, the New Iberian local responsible for Robicheaux's wife's death, and all are looking to the detective as the murderer. Can Robicheaux clear his name?

The merciless Shondell and Balangie families are long-time enemies in the New Iberia criminal underworld. Yet their youngest heirs, Johnny and Isolde - star-crossed teenage lovers - have run away together. As he tried to uncover the reasons why, Robicheaux gets too close to both Isolde's mother and her father's mistress. In retribution, Balangie - as jealous as he is cruel - hires an assassin to hunt Robicheaux and his long-time partner, Clete Purcel.

A bullet shot through the window of Weldon Sonnier's house propels Dave Robicheaux back into the lives of a family he's not sure he wants to be reacquainted with ... Weldon Sonnier's CIA-influenced past has led to dangerous connections and commitments, including debts to local mob boss Joey 'Meatballs' Gouza. As Weldon puts himself in the line of fire, Lyle Sonnier, television evangelist and faith healer, reveals to Dave a violent family history that intersects menacingly with Dave's own.

Hackberry Holland is a man haunted by a chequered and traumatic past. A former POW from the Korean War, he has left everything behind to become sheriff of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas. Hack soon finds himself dealing with more than just his own demons when nine dead prostitutes are dug up behind a run-down church. The search for justice - and revenge - pits Hack against hired guns, drug dealers, and a psychotic killer known as The Preacher.

When Amanda Boudreau is raped and murdered, it's small-time black hustler Tee Bobby Hulin's prints that are found at the crime scene. Tee Bobby pleads innocence, but then attempts suicide in his holding cell. Why? Lawyer Perry LaSalles takes on the defence, but his motives are fuelled by guilt.

Hunting a sadistic killer who targets young prostitutes, Detective Dave Robicheaux has no mind to be sidetracked into persuading ex-schoolmate mobster Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni to leave town. And it turns out that Balboni is the money behind a Civil War movie that's bringing in good business. But then the film crew stumble on a skeleton out in the bayou, and the links between a thirty-year-old lynching, a Civil War general, Balboni and the serial killer lead Dave into treacherous waters, with only a handful of unexpected allies to help him protect his own.

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.

Lucas Smothers, nineteen and from the wrong end of town, has been arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. His lawyer Billy Bob Holland is convinced of Lucas's innocence but proving it means unearthing the truth from a seething mass of deceit and corruption. A corruption endemic in the way it can be only in a gossipy small town where everybody knows everybody else's business. Billy Bob's relationship with Lucas's family is not an easy one—years back he was a close friend of Mrs Smothers, too close according to her husband Vernon.