Creole Belle: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke. Mystery / thriller.

Creole Belle by James Lee Burke. New York Times Bestseller. Hardcover with dust jacket. 528 pages. “All the characters . . . are superbly drawn, and the plot is heart-pounding.” —The Washington Post “Another stunner from a modern master.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) This book is like an armchair travel portal to New Orleans as seen through eyes of a local detective. Burkes’s beloved character, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux, investigates the disappearance of a young Creole woman, while an oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to destroy the cherished beauty of the Louisiana bayous in this gripping thriller. Set against the events of the Gulf Coast oil spill, rife with “the menaces of greed and violence and man-made horror” (The Christian Science Monitor), Creole Belle finds Dave Robicheaux languishing in a New Orleans recovery unit since surviving a bayou shoot-out. The detective’s body is healing; it’s his morphine-addled mind that conjures spectral visions of Tee Jolie Melton, a young woman who in reality has gone missing. An iPod with an old blues song left by his bedside turns Robicheaux into a man obsessed… And as oil companies assign blame after an epic disaster threatens the Gulf’s very existence, Robicheaux unearths connections between tragedies both global and personal—and faces down forces that can corrupt and destroy the best of men. “A work of dark and radiant brilliance.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch