Heaven's Prisoners
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4.3 • 27 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
James Lee Burke’s second Robicheaux novel takes the detective out of New Orleans and into the bayou as he seeks a quieter life.
Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective’s badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana’s bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life—and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he’s known since childhood; Rocque’s hungry Cajun wife; and a Federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First met in Burke's excellent mystery, The Neon Rain, Dave Robicheaux is a driven mandriven by his constant battle with alcoholism; by memories of his past as a detective on the New Orleans police force; by his need for order; by his obsession with the seedy, aberrant side of New Orleans life. Trying to put his own life together again, Dave has married Annie and now runs a small fishing rental business in the Louisiana bayou. When he and Annie witness the crash of a small plane, in which four peopleobviously illegal aliensdie, and only a little girl survives, Robicheaux is drawn to the trail of a network of crimes that suggests a Central American dope-running ring operated with the connivance of federal agents. Violence ensues, and Robicheaux, no stranger to tragedy, must confront it again when Annie becomes a victim. Haunted by guilt, deeply depressed, in constant danger, Robicheaux trusts no one, including the cops, for he knows that they too, are capable of skirting the law. Burke beautifully evokes New Orleans and the mysterious bayous, and he skillfully depicts the different lifestyles that distinguish the Gulf region. Robicheaux is a complex character whose integrity and high principles are always in conflict with the darker side of human nature. This is a mystery fans will savor for its ruminating intelligence and graceful prose as well as for its heart-stopping suspense.
