By now, the ingredients of a Dave Robicheaux thriller should be familiar to the constant reader: an ex-alcoholic Vietnam vet Louisiana cop with a self-righteous streak for whom even a trip to the shop to buy some milk ends up being a wrestling match with great themes of life and death and good and evil against the backdrop of epic natural grandeur and decay; there's his old partner, an alcoholic overweight burnout with poor impulse control, PTSD and a violent criminal career before turning PI who will find some rich wife or widow in trouble and end up in bed with her despite everyone up to and including the Hand Of God descending from the heavens with a note the size of the Grand Canyon tied to its finger stating this it is a Bad Idea but who is, nonetheless, the Goodest Man In The World; there's Dave's daughter, beautiful, talented, headstrong and doesn't like being called 'kid' anymore; new since the previous book is Clete's daughter, abuse survivor turned near-mythical mob hitperson, out of the life and making films and just maybe the person to whom all the bad things James Lee Burke can't bring himself to let happen to Alafair will happen instead; there's usually a basically decent law enforcement official who just won't see things the way Dave and Clete see them and who is small-mindedly constrained by not grasping the titanic spiritual war at the heart of each book; there is a rich family who are all awful, awful human beings; there is a not-so rich person who is even worse and either working for or using the awful rich people and committing various atrocities for reasons the human mind cannot easily contain within the comforting confines of Judeo Christian morality, or something; and there will be a damaged, dangerous, violent man looking for redemption, with or without the help or hindrance of good or bad woman, depending.

You'd think after twenty of them you'd get tired of it, but nope, bring on the next one.

Light Of The World has Dave and family taking a break from battling fathomless evil and venality in Louisiana to go battle some fathomless evil and venality in Montana, staying with their writer friend, with whom Dave, at least, never seems to do anything other than argue. Someone shoots an arrow at Alafair, and Dave hassles what turns out to probably be the wrong guy over it, but that's okay, he's involved anyway. There's an escaped, presumed dead serial killer who may be an avatar of an evil from outside the ken of men stalking the landscape, some dead and missing women, and a vile, filthy rich family up to no good. Clete's got a bad feeling about this one, he thinks it might be his last boogie, but we gotta punch their lights under a black flag, podna. Honestly, Dave and Clete must be scary and weird and insufferable to other people, and they ain't aging gracefully, but Burke continues to write like an angel taking an aerial survey of hell, making these books addictive and cathartic. One of the most readable crime novelists working today.