Twenty years ago, Dave Robicheaux watched helplessly, too drunk to do anything about it, as a friend was gunned down in an armored car robbery. Now, sober and back on his own turf, he finds the old case has returned to haunt him.
Mobsters who Robicheaux suspected in the killing have turned up in Louisiana, eager to cash in on the state’s burgeoning casino industry. And the dead friend’s lovely daughter, all grown up now, has followed them, bent on getting justice – or better yet, revenge.
That is the setup for the intriguing plot of “Pegasus Descending,” the 15th novel in James Lee Burke’s series featuring the New Iberia, La., police officer.
Burke’s fans will find all the usual earmarks of a Robicheaux novel.
There is Robicheaux’s struggle to remain sane and sober, and his inability to escape the evils of the past.
There is the hero’s, and Burke’s, deeply held belief that some people are born evil.
“The two-page evaluation that came through the department’s fax machine was a study in failure,” Burke writes about one suspect, “not simply society and institutional failure but the kind that reaches all the way back through the evolution of the species.”
There is the villainy and hypocrisy of great wealth and power.
“We’re dinosaurs,” Robicheaux’s big, violent friend Clete says in a rare moment of reflection. “This isn’t the same country we grew up in. The scumbags own it, from top to bottom. Except they have college degrees and wear two-thousand dollar suits.”
As in every James Lee Burke novel, the contrast between the writer’s lyrical style and the dark and violent world he describes is simply stunning.
As good as it is, “Pegasus Descending,” doesn’t quite live up to the standard Burke set with his last book, the brilliant “Crusader’s Cross,” but it is a fine addition to one of the greatest series in American crime fiction.
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