In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead Hardcover - 1993

From one of America's most widely acclaimed writers comes a masterwork of detective fiction, the most suspenseful, thematically complex, and dazzling accomplishment in the series featuring Dave Robicheaux. A movie crew has come to New Iberia, Louisiana, to film a Civil War epic, and star Elrod Sykes just can't seem to keep his lavender Cadillac on the road. Under threat of a drunk-driving charge, he offers Detective Dave Robicheaux information in exchange for leniency: he leads him to the skeletal remains of a black man whose murder Robicheaux witnessed in the summer of 1957 as a college freshman. The still-unsolved crime haunts him as he grapples with a more pressing, contemporary horror, the serial rape and murder of young prostitutes. When the FBI arrives in the person of agent Rosie Gomez, Robicheaux must form a new partnership that challenges how he views himself and his local community, where officials have joined forces with such dubious "talent" as Julie "Baby Feet" Balboni, an investor in the movie project that is generating much-needed income for the region. It is only when Dave makes the acquaintance of the legendary Confederate cavalry officer General John Bell Hood in the mist of the bayou that he begins to understand that "the war is never over", and that the battle rages on. James Lee Burke's brilliant handling of a multilayered plot, entwined with a reverie on the death of the chivalric code in the South, makes for a stunning novel in a series that is redefining the genre.