...cont'd...

In The Electric Mist is the sixth book in the series, and involves a killer targeting young prostitutes and the discovery of a body from decades before, both of which are somehow connected with a movie shooting in the locality and the gangster who is funding it, a man who went to school with Dave. All the familiar elements of a Robicheaux are there, with the exception of Clete Purcel rolling round like a match searching for a powder keg. Dave debates the nature of good and evil with the spirit of a Confederate general while searching for a killer and wrestling with his own demons of drink and violence, his disgust with the venality and self-interest of people around him threatening to overwhelm his own sense of decency.
I got my first James Lee Burke novel, Heaven's Prisoners, from the Cork City library when I was an impoverished, study-shy 19 year old student, and read it under a hot April sun down by the river on the grounds of the University. His books remain as beautiful and potent and profound as they did when I lost whole days to them beside the Lee, and I don't begrudge a single one.