Robicheaux is an extraordinarily powerful novel, an absolute masterpiece of crime fiction. It is filled with the most incredible prose, thoughtful, violent, nasty, and just plain out great writing. It’s worth reading more than once -just that good.
Although I am a bit late to the party – starting with book 21 of the series that stretches back over many volumes, I fully intend to read each and every one of those other 20 books.
Robicheaux takes us to New Iberia, a Cajun town near New Orleans, haunted by unsolved murders, gangsters, corruption, slick politicians, and more. Police detective Robicheaux too is haunted by his past in Vietnam, by deeds we don’t speak of, and by his wife’s death in a car accident. Shootings, rapes, beatings, torture fill the book, but what makes it is the prose that is so haunting you want to highlight a passage in just about every page. It’s not a book of good guys and bad guys necessarily, but far more complex and interconnected. The characters are filled with motivations and depth.
Pulp, Crime, & Mystery Books 