Review by Booklist Review
If readers know Dave Robicheaux, the New Orleans cop who's headlined more than 20 novels, then they'll know his old friend and frequent partner, Clete Purcel. Clete's been a supporting character going way back to 1987 and the first Robicheaux novel, The Neon Rain, and here he takes center stage. Make no mistake, this is Clete's story told in his inimitable voice ("Louisiana is a state of mind, more like the baths of Caracalla without the moral restraint"). It's set in the late 1990s, "before Katrina and before the Towers." Clete's car has been vandalized, it seems, by drug dealers, which hits awfully close to home, since Clete has lost a relative to a drug overdose. Hot on the trail of the vandals, he and Dave (in a distinctly supporting role) begin to hear about a new and highly addictive drug, and what starts as a search for some minor thugs turns into something altogether more dangerous. It'll come as no surprise to Burke's fans that this is a perfectly constructed story told extremely well, and the opportunity to see Dave through the eyes of his best friend, from a new and rather intimate angle, absolutely should not be missed.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the gonzo latest from Edgar winner Burke (Harbor Lights), detective Dave Robicheaux's friend, P.I. Clete Purcel, gets caught up in the bizarre pursuit of a bioweapon in late-1990s Louisiana. Clete wakes one Sunday to find three men disassembling his Cadillac in search of contraband. During a brief confrontation, the men knock Clete unconscious, and from there, the story spins out in a dizzying array of directions. One of Clete's assailants turns out to be a member of an occult neo-Nazi group; the men appeared to be on a mission that also involves slimy millionaire Lauren Bow and his actor wife, Clara. They're all after a bioweapon called Leprechaun, which may or may not have been in the Cadillac. Clete gets help from Robicheaux, sheriff Helen Soileau, and Joan of Arc, who appears in prophetic visions to steer him from further harm. Readers will delight in Burke's sterling prose (Louisiana is "an antediluvian place that could have been formed on the first day of Creation, then forgotten, feral and threatening") and take heart amid the surreal proceedings in Robicheaux's assertion that "mysteries exist. The denial of them is an absurdity." This is a winner. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Burke returns to Louisiana's New Iberia Parish and the late 1990s for a tangled tale that confronts private eye Clete Purcel with monsters in the present and spirits from the past. If only Clete hadn't taken his Cadillac Eldorado to his old friend Eddy Durbin's car wash, things would have been fine, or at least no worse than usual. Instead, he looks out his window and sees a trio of lowlifes who've broken into the car, dismantling its doors, clearly in a futile search for drugs they think have been stashed there under the aegis of Andy Durbin, Eddy's kid brother. As Clete worries about the return of the wrecking crew, and especially of sneering antisemite Baylor Hemmings, a rising star in the New Rising militia, other complications pop up. Clara Bow, Clete's neighbor, wants him to dig up evidence that will undermine her estranged husband Lauren Bow's lawsuit against her over the Ponzi scheme they ran, then launches a production of the film Flags on the Bayou, which will sound awfully familiar to Burke's fans. Winston "Sperm-O" Sellers, the Biloxi bondsman whom pole dancer Gracie Lamar kicked in the mouth when he grabbed at her ankle, is killed. So are ex-KKK auto mechanic Hap Armstrong and Eddy Durbin. Clete's fight to the death with a heavily tattooed member of the wrecking crew climaxes with his vision of Joan of Arc, who seems to have killed Ink Man with a sniper rifle. The continuing presence of Joan deepens and blurs Clete's hard-headed first-person voice, making it more and more like the ruminative voice of his old friend Dave Robicheaux, the franchise lead who gracefully settles into a supporting role here. Devils and saints wrestle in the mud of bayou country. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
