A Louisiana farmer is jailed for the murder, 30 years earlier, of a black civil rights leader. The farmer claims he is innocent and asks Dave Robicheaux, the sheriff's deputy, to help him prove it. Not easy, as it suits a lot of people to have the case closed.

Returning to his Louisiana hometown to investigate a murder, detective Dave Robicheaux finds his skills pushed to their limits when his best friend is accused and his daughter becomes involved in shady business dealings.

"When Hollywood invades New Iberia Parish to film a Civil War epic, restless specters waiting in the shadows for Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux are reawakened - ghosts of a history best left undisturbed. Hunting a serial killer preying on the lawless young, Robicheaux comes face-to-face with the elusive guardians of his darkest torments - who hold the key to his ultimate salvation ... or a final, fatal downfall."--Page 4 of cover.

For detective Dave Robicheaux, memories -- including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth -- are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to resurrect a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin, and Robicheaux's half brother, Jimmie, paid a brutal price for entering her world. Now the truth will plunge Robicheaux into the manipulations of New Orleans'...

This book begins where the last book in the Dave Robicheaux series, The Glass Rainbow, ended. Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song "Creole Belle" on it. Then she disappears. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile,...

A conversation between Robicheaux and a dying childhood friend about Ida Durbin, a young prostitute that Robicheaux's half-brother, Jimmie, loved and lost in the late 1950s, sets the ex-homicide detective on a path that eventually leads to several gruesome killings and his near downfall. Unemployed, his wife dead, his daughter in college, Robicheaux rejoins the New Iberia, La., sheriff's department at the urging of Sheriff Helen Soileau, who needs...

Detective Dave Robicheaux's world isn't filled with too many happy stories, but Desmond Cormier's rags-to-riches tale is certainly one of them. Robicheaux first met Cormier on the streets of New Orleans, when the young, undersized boy had foolish dreams of becoming a Hollywood director. Twenty-five years later, when Robicheaux knocks on Cormier's door, it isn't to congratulate him on his Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Robicheaux has discovered...

"Dave Robicheaux is a haunted man. From the acts he committed in Vietnam, to his battles with alcoholism, to the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts pepper his reality. Robicheaux's only beacon remains serving as a detective in New Iberia, Louisiana. It's in that capacity that Robicheaux crosses paths with powerful mob boss, Tony Nemo. Tony has a Civil War sword he'd...

Desperately holding together the pieces of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New Iberia police force. While transporting two death-row prisoners, Dave is wounded, his partner is killed. Now he’s trailing a killer into the heart of the Big Easy’s underworld. Embroiled in a world of drug dealers, prostitutes, and double-crosses, Robicheaux is forced to confront his most dangerous enemy: himself. Absorbing and masterfully...