About the Author

James Lee Burke is the author of sixteen previous books, including the New York Times bestsellers Cimarron Rose, Cadillac Jukebox, Burning Angel, and Dixie City Jam. He lives with his wife in Missoula, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.

Reviews

After stepping into stand-alone territory with Cimmaron Rose (1997), Burke choreographs a masterful return to the lush and brooding world of volatile New Iberia Sheriff's Deputy Dave Robicheaux (Cadillac Jukebox, 1996). This tale's strength lies in breathtaking, moody descriptive passages and incisive vignettes that set time, place and character. Burke's major themes, that the past is key to the present and that money buys power, pervade this mystery. The narrative, with more twists and bounces than a fish fighting a hook, rises from the violent, unsolved murder 40 years ago of union organizer Jack Flynn. The story encompasses at least eight disparate but interlocking subplots: the crooked money behind a movie directed by Flynn's son Cisco; the hold that ex-con Swede Boxleiter has on Cisco's photojournalist sister, Megan; Willie "Cool Breeze" Broussard's theft of a mob warehouse; his wife Ida's suicide 20 years ago; the shooting of two white brothers who raped a black woman; alcoholic Lisa Terrebonne's haunted childhood; her wealthy, arrogant father's ties to Harpo Scruggs, a vicious murderer; the post-Civil War killing by freed slaves of a Terrebonne servant. Hired assassins, snitches, lawmen and FBI agents weave through the novel. Dave and his partner Detective Helen Soileau find the connections, but Dave knows that in the ongoing class war, the worst criminals wield too much influence to pay for their crimes. In rich, dense prose, Burke conjures up bizarre, believable characters who inhabit vivid, spellbinding scenes in a multifaceted, engrossing plot. $300,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June)

Burke switches publishers and moves from straightforward mystery in this story of the 40-year-old murder of a prominent labor leader, a case being reopened by his daughter.

"Splendidly atmospheric...with dialogue so sharp you can shave with it."--People

"One of the best novels of the year from one of the very best writers at work today."--Rocky Mountain News

"Engrossing...a vivid, violent fable...James Lee Burke outshines himself in Sunset Limited."--Daily News (N.Y.)

"America's best novelist."--The Denver Post

"Top-drawer work...James Lee Burke just keeps getting better...Burke writes of the bayous, their people and their violence with electrical luminescence. The dialogue crackles like heat lightning and the story races from conflict to conflict. Robicheaux, a modern-day tragic hero, continues to grow as one of crime fiction's major figures."--San Antonio Express-News

"Burke's dialogue sounds true as a tape recording; his writing about action is strong and economical. . . . Burke is a prose stylist to be reckoned with."--Los Angeles Times Book Review "Burke flies miles above most contemporary crime novelists."--The Orlando Sentinel "Among writers in the genre, only Tony Hillerman's novels about the Navajo tribal police match Burke's ability to write evocatively about the natural world. . . . It's hard to imagine readers not bolting it down like a steaming plate of crawfish etouffee."--Entertainment Weekly

"Burke writes prose that has a pronounced streak of poetry in it."--The New York Times "James Lee Burke isn't simply a crime writer--he's the Graham Greene of the bayou."--New York Daily News

"If you haven't already discovered Burke's novels, find one!"--Chicago Tribune

"James Lee Burke can write some of the best scenes of violence in American literature. He can also toss out a metaphor or a brief descriptive phrase that can stop a reader cold."--The Washington Post Book World

"It has become apparent that not since Raymond Chandler has anyone so thoroughly reinvented the crime and mystery genre as James Lee Burke."--Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall

"If you haven't read Burke, get going."--Playboy

"Nobody working in the genre holds us more compellingly than Mr. Burke, or with such style and ferocity. He stands all but alone in the invention of character."--The New Yorker

"One of our most compelling novelists."--New York Newsday

"Few writers in america can evoke a region as well as Burke."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Robicheaux is a detective to be reckoned with, more interesting than Spenser, more complex and satisfying than Travis McGee . . . James Lee Burke is a writer to be remembered."--USA Today

"Burke writes prose as moody and memory-laden as his region."--Time

"Burke tells a story in a style all his own; language that's alive, electric; he's a master at setting mood, laying in atmosphere, all with quirky, raunchy dialog that's a delight."--Elmore Leonard

"It's hard to deny the powerful impact of Mr. Burke's hard-boiled poetics."--The Wall Street Journal