Page Updated: 04/02/2008

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James Lee Burke - Page 4

Cadillac Jukebox In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead The Neon Rain Burning Angel A Stained White Radiance

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First British Edition Orion (1996)

Cadillac Jukebox
See Review by Ralph Lees
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
When former Klansman and piney-woods outcast Aaron Crown is imprisoned for a decades old murder, his former friend Dave Robicheaux finds himself believing in Crown's innocence. Then a Hollywood filmmaker who has taken up Crown's case is found murdered, and the most villainous character Burke has created to date, Mookie Zerrang, brings his bloody agenda to the Cajun wetlands of South Louisiana.
But it is when Buford La Rose, scion of an old white Southern family and author of the book that helped convict Crown, runs for election as State governor that Robicheaux's involvement with Aaron Crown deepens to a level he can barely fathom. And it is Buford's social climbing wife, Karyn, with whom Robicheaux had had an affair years before, who proves to be his most poisonous adversary....
America's hottest crime writer delivers another scorching story of Southern justice in this brilliant successor to the bestsellers Dixie City Jam and Burning Angel. With characterisation and dialogue combustible enough to set each other alight, Cadillac Jukebox is a vivid, atmospheric and lyrical tour de force.
"The ultimate in crime writing. Uniquely satisfying." Literary Review
"That James Lee Burke has been consigned to the literary ghetto marked "crime fiction" is itself an offence. Burke is a fine writer, his prose swathed in style and atmosphere, his characters rich, unusual but always utterly believable. James Lee Burke is an exceptional writer; no qualification necessary" Observer
'The dialogue crackles with vitality and realism ... Tension builds not with shock-bang crudity but in little subtle steps, hardly noticeable until a pulverising, shocking act takes place... the best of American writing, never mind just American crime writing' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'Crime pick of the year has to be Cadillac Jukebox… Burke is a unique, almost mystical stylist who writes from the heart as well as the head' Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph

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First British Edition Orion (1993)

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
A movie crew has come to New Iberia, Louisiana, to film a Civil War epic, and star Elrod Sykes just can't seem to keep his lavender Cadillac on the road. Under threat of a drunk-driving charge, he offers detective Dave Robicheaux information in exchange for leniency: he leads him to the skeletal remains of a black man whose murder Robicheaux witnessed in the summer of 1957 as a college freshman. The still unsolved crime haunts him as he grapples with a more pressing contemporary horror, the serial rape and murder of young prostitutes.
When the FBI arrives in the person of agent Rosie Gomez, Robicheaux must form a new partnership that challenges how he views himself and his local community, where officials have joined forces with such dubious 'talent' as Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni, an investor in the movie project that is generating much needed income for the region.
But it is only when Robicheaux makes the acquaintance of the legendary Confederate cavalry officer General John Bell Hood in the mist of the bayou that he begins to understand that "the war is never over', and that the battle rages on.
James Lee Burke's brilliant handling of a multilayered plot, entwined with a reverie on the death of the chivalric code in the South, makes for a stunning novel in a series that is redefining the genre.

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Paperback - Mysterious Press

The Neon Rain
Not even his years as a New Orleans homicide detective could have prepared Dave Robicheaux for the condemned man's last confession. Johnny Massina only had three hours left to live and now he was warning Robicheaux of another death. His own.
To find out why he's become a target Robicheaux takes up the murder investigation of a young black girl he pulled out of a Bayou swamp two weeks before. But it's an investigation that will lead him to a drug-dealing Mafia, an ex-general with sinister connections in Nicaragua - and to a terrifying confrontation with the one horror her fears most of all....
James Lee Burke brilliantly evokes the dark, brooking side of New Orleans; its criminals, hustlers, predators and victims. Vivid, tender, violent and utterly compelling The Neon Rain marks the debut of an outstanding new talent.
"Burke's writing is masterful" Washington Post
"Reminiscent of Elmore Leonard ... both chilling and first rate entertainment" Publishers Weekly

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Burning Angel
See Review by Ralph Lees

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Paperback - Arrow (1993)

A Stained White Radiance
A bullet shot through the window of Weldon Sonnier's house propels Dave Robicheaux back into the lives of a family that he's not sure whether he wants to be reacquainted with.
As a man whose CIA-influenced past has led to dangerous commitments, including debts to local mob boss Joey 'Meatballs' Gouza, Weldon may have put himself in the line of fire. And it is left to Lyle Sonnier, television evangelist and faith healer, to fill Dave in on a violent family history - a history that intersects menacingly with Dave's own. But overshadowing the manoeuvres of Gouza's lethal gang of thugs is the spectre of racial politics in the modern South, and it is former Klansman Bobby Earl who proves to be Dave Robicheaux's most elusive enemy.
This is the fifth highly-acclaimed novel in the series featuring the Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux.
'American crime fiction has no finer prose stylist than James Lee Burke, and he has never been better than in A Stained White Radiance... An intricate plotter with all the narrative gifts of a born storyteller ' Los Angeles Times Book Review
'A complex brew, dark and strong... if you haven't read James Lee Burke, he's worth discovering…' USA Today

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