New Iberia Lt. Dave Robicheaux (A Stained White Radiance, 1992, etc.) is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie (Baby Feet) Balboni—back in his home parish as co- producer of Hollywood director Michael Goldman's Civil War film—when sozzled/psychic movie-star Elrod Sykes, pulled over for drunk driving, starts babbling about a corpse he found in the Atchafalaya Swamp—the corpse of a black man Dave had seen murdered 35 years before. Convinced that Baby Feet is the key to both the old murder and the horrific new serial killings of prostitutes, Dave goes outside the law to nail him over the protests of locals getting fat off Hollywood-and- mob money—provoking stunning new outbursts of violence, getting suspended after a shootout leaves still another prostitute dead, and finding himself holding hushed conversations with the specter of a Confederate general whom Sykes had already met deep in the bayou. Dave's visions of the Confederate dead bring a Faulknerian resonance to the miasmal guilt and self-doubt that enrich all his encounters with evil. After outstanding success in the genre, Burke has produced a violent, somber, deeply satisfying crossover novel.
Pub Date: April 15, 1993
ISBN: 1-56282-882-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
Fast-talking sports agent Myron Bolitar won’t win any awards for baseball (since his Little League brushback) or basketball (thanks to his bum knee), but his paperback detective work has already won him an Anthony, a Shamus, and an Edgar. His hardcover debut dangles an appealing potential client in front of him—Brenda Slaughter, basketball star of the New York Dolphins—but there’s a catch: Before he can sign her, he has to protect her from the threats she’s been getting, and maybe even track down her missing parents (Dad’s been gone a week, Mom 20 years). What could anybody have against Brenda—unless it’s the mobsters who want to press her into defecting to a rival women’s league, or the wealthy and well-connected Arthur Bradford, the gubernatorial candidate determined to keep the truth about his wife’s ancient suicide under wraps, or all the New Jersey cops who are either on Bradford’s payroll or would like to be? Undaunted, Myron and his Spenser-inspired entourage—his bisexual assistant Esperanza Diaz, his financial-planning associate Windsor Horne Lockwood III (who, despite his blond complexion, probably shaves in front of a photo of Spenser’s buddy Hawk), and his ex-wrestler temp Big Cyndi, who doesn’t like to be called just Cyndi—take on every soul in New Jersey with a gun, a bank account, and a bad attitude, and uncover a satisfyingly complex tangle of skullduggery. Could Myron, who pushes his wisecracking charm hard, be any more tough and adorable? It’ll be a pleasure waiting for the next installment to find out.
Pub Date: May 11, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32369-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
The impossibly busy plot, linking every felony in the Western Hemisphere over a generation, clogs Tempe’s fifth (Fatal...
Invited to Guatemala to examine the remains of rural Mayan villagers executed over 20 years ago, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan doesn’t know that her reconstruction of the brutal annihilation of Chupan Ya is only the prelude to a series of escalating horrors. First, Tempe’s colleague Molly Carraway and her driver are ambushed on an isolated road; then Tempe is asked to analyze a grisly discovery made in the septic tank belonging to a little hotel in Guatemala City. Four young women, including Chantale Specter, the headstrong daughter of the Canadian ambassador, have gone missing from the capital over the past six months, and the corpse in the tank may provide evidence of a possible serial killer or consolation to the ambassador and his wife. But no sooner is Tempe ordered by her boss back in Québec to undertake an examination than she’s stonewalled by the very local authorities who’d asked for her participation. Nor does her brief time with the corpse yield any clues to the murderer’s identity; the most remarkable findings, in fact, concern a telltale cat hair. A trip back to her home base in Québec will provide some answers at the expense of raising others, and the range of felons and felonies will broaden with every gruesome discovery. Even Tempe’s off-again romance with high-handed cop Andrew Ryan will be shaken by a new pursuer, Guatemala City Sgt. Bartolomé Galiano, Ryan’s old schoolmate.
The impossibly busy plot, linking every felony in the Western Hemisphere over a generation, clogs Tempe’s fifth (Fatal Voyage, 2001, etc.) as badly as that septic tank.Pub Date: July 9, 2002
ISBN: 0-684-85973-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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