Louisiana sleuth Dave Robicheaux (who made it big in the Edgar Award-winning Black Cherry Blues , LJ 8/89) confronts his nastiest villain yet: neo-Nazi Will Buchalter. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A Nazi U-boat sunk 50 years ago off the Louisiana coast is the catalyst for New Iberia (La.) sheriff's deputy Dave Robicheaux's latest descent into the depths of human nature. Knowing that Dave had found the boat as a boy, drugstore mogul Hippo Bimstine offers him $10,000 to locate it again for salvage. Dave refuses but changes his mind (and ups the price) when he needs money to beat a bum murder rap facing his hired hand, Batist Perry: The rap is being pressed by vindictive New Orleans vice cop Nate Baxter, who is determined to get back at Dave and his PI buddy Clete Purcel. Dave's plan works--it convinces Nate's hard-nosed black sergeant, Lucinda Bergeron, to give information that puts Batist back on the street--but at a terrible price: Dave soon finds himself fighting against sinister club owners Max and Bobo Calucci, who want Clete's girlfriend to work out of taxicabs, and Tommy Lonighan, a typically reflective Burke villain (Dave: ``I shouldn't have hit him.... He's a tormented man. The guy's got a furnace in his head'') who's dying of prostate cancer but refuses to roll over on the Calucci brothers. But Dave's biggest troubles are still ahead: Magnetic neo-Nazi Will Buchalter (called in by Tommy? by the Caluccis?), determined to locate the U-boat ahead of Hippo, terrorizes Dave's wife, Bootsie, kidnaps and tortures Dave, and keeps disappearing into the sunset after executing his accomplices- -all while Max and Bobo are contracting an off-limits kill and Dave's wrestling with Lucinda Bergeron and her main-chance son, Zoot, over the best way to nail the bad guys, avoid selling out, and maybe stay alive. Dave's adventures are usually dominated by a single violent, charismatic heavy. In squeezing Hippo, Tommy, the Caluccis, Will, and Dave himself into one book, Burke cuts himself off from the concentrated power of the masterly In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) but multiplies the possibilities of cathartic violence--and produces his darkest, densest novel yet. ($200,000 ad/promo; author tour)

There comes a time in the life of any successful mystery series when its author must decide whether change is necessary. You really can't win at this game. Either you stick with what brung you and are criticized for repeating yourself, or you attempt something new and alienate those who have grown comfortable with the series' familiar rhythms. James Lee Burke knows there is really only one way to solve this conundrum: keep writing good books. His Dave Robicheaux series is now in its seventh installment and shows no signs of fatigue, though Burke continues to stick close to his basic formula: New Iberia, Louisiana, cop Robicheaux becomes entangled with a sociopath who poses a threat to Robicheaux's family; Dave, usually with the help of former partner Cletus Purcell, reacts violently, eventually vanquishing the foe but not without experiencing loss, sometimes to those around him, sometimes to his sense of self. This time the foe is a neo-Nazi sadist who thinks Dave is the key to finding a German U-Boat that has been bouncing around the Gulf of Mexico since World War II. Threats to Dave's wife and child draw Robicheaux into a violent confrontation. A Robicheaux novel can always be counted on for atmosphere (no one uses New Orleans and evirons better), for bone-hard realism (especially on the subject of violence, its allure and its horror), and for melancholy reflection on the inevitability of the old giving way to the new. Burke keeps it all fresh by never losing sight of the soft edges around his hard characters and by somehow being able to crank out a little extra lyricism at just the right moment. New Orleans stays the same without going flat. Why shouldn't Burke? (Reviewed July 1994)0786860197Bill Ott

After his dreamy sojourn into Civil War history in In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead , former New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux comes up against the residue of Nazism in his action-packed, somewhat rambling seventh adventure. When Batist, who helps Dave run his bait shop, is arrested for the latest in a series of murders of New Orleans drug dealers, Dave must raise money for his bail. For a $10,000 finder's fee, he agrees to search for a Nazi submarine sunk in 1942 off the coast of New Iberia, where he is now deputy sheriff. While the sub search draws the attention of a neo-Nazi sadist who threatens Dave's wife, Bootsie, Dave is distracted by the antics of his former partner, Clete Purcel, who has decided to take on mob interests and, in one instance, destroys a crime boss's mansion with an earth mover. Before a dramatic resolution at sea draws the threads of the plots loosely together, Dave traces an intricate course marked by ritual killings, bouts of torture, Bootsie's anxiety (from which she seeks relief in drink) and racial and gender politics within the New Orleans police force, drawing Dave into the lives of a feisty black woman cop and her teenage son. A standout in the diverting supporting cast is doom-predicting Brother Oswald, who employs a maddeningly roundabout manner of discourse. In this physically demanding, fast moving plot, Dave is less ruminative than when last seen, though he holds on to his trademark melancholy-tinged sensitivity. $200,000 ad/promo; 20-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved