Synopses & Reviews
New York Times bestselling author and “America’s best novelist” (
The Denver Post) James Lee Burke is back with the twentieth mystery in the masterful Dave Robicheaux series.
Sadist and serial killer Asa Surrette narrowly escaped the death penalty for the string of heinous murders he committed while capital punishment was outlawed in Kansas. But following a series of damning articles written by Dave Robicheaux’s daughter Alafair, Surrette escapes from a prison transport van and heads to Montana, where an unsuspecting Dave — along with Alafair; Dave’s wife, Molly; Dave’s faithful partner Clete; and Clete’s newfound daughter, Gretchen Horowitz — have come to take in the sweet summer air.
Surrette may be even worse than Dave’s old enemy Legion Guidry, a man Dave suspected might very well be the devil incarnate. But before Dave can stop Surrette from harming those he loves most, he’ll have to do battle with Love Younger, an enigmatic petrochemical magnate seeking to build an oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas, and Wyatt Dixon, a rodeo clown with a dark past whom Burke fans will recall from his Billy Bob Holland novels.
Says The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), “Already designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, Burke should get another title, say, for sustained literary brilliance in his Dave Robicheaux series.” Drawing on real events that took place in Wichita, Kansas, over a twenty-year span, Light of the World is a harrowing novel that examines the nature of evil and pits Dave Robicheaux against the most diabolical villain he has ever faced.
Review
"Hats off to the Library of Congress cataloger who applied the subject heading 'Good and Evil' to Burke's latest Dave Robicheaux novel. In that simple tag lies the core of this acclaimed series....Occasionally the evil comes in a more chilling, vaguely supernatural form--depravity beyond sociology--giving these novels a darker, more mythic tone...but it works, enveloping the reader in the visceral terror of the moment."
Booklist, starred review
Review
"Burke produces his most sharply focused, and perhaps his most harrowing, study of human evil, refracted through the conventions of the crime novel."
Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A powerful meditation on the nature — and smell — of evil....But even as the stomach roils, the fingers keep turning the pages because the much-honored Burke (two Edgars, a Guggenheim Fellowship) is a master storyteller."
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Review
"Fans will be thrilled to find Robicheaux and Clete Purcel joined by their respective adult daughters in a hard-hitting, intense battle between good and evil....As the story unfolds, a rodeo cowboy who speaks in tongues, a serial killer who should be dead, ex-cons, rapists, bear traps and evil that dwells in caves in the hills all come together in perhaps the greatest showdown of Burke's career."
ShelfAwareness.com
Review
"Over the years, James Lee Burke's voice has grown more messianic, his books more biblical. He's in full fire-and-brimstone mode in Light of the World....[The] monstrous villain [makes] life a living hell for an expanded cast of the quaintly insane characters who are Burke's specialty. For that alone, let's give the devil his due."
The New York Times Book Review
Review
"James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux, the haunted, all-too-human homicide detective from the Louisiana bayou country, first appeared more than 25 years ago in The Neon Rain. It was apparent, even then, that Burke had given us an extraordinary character, one whose depth, complexity and evocative narrative voice was worth returning to again and again. That has turned out to be the case. Light of the World is the 20th installment in this increasingly ambitious series, and it reaffirms Robicheaux's status as one of the most successfully sustained creations in contemporary crime fiction."
Washington Post Book World
Review
"[Light of the World] is vintage Burke: a killer plot, flawed but decent heroes, loathsome villains, a keen sense of history and philosophy and prose that leaves the reader in awe....At once lovely and lethal, Light of the World shimmers with Burke's ability to depict the best and the worst of the human family, and to do so with a steady eye and a generous heart."
Jay Strafford, Richmond Times-Dispatch
About the Author
James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, is the author of more than thirty previous novels and two collections of short stories, including such New York Times bestsellers as Light of the World, Creole Belle, Swan Peak, The Tin Roof Blowdown, and Feast Day of Fools. He lives in Missoula, Montana.