From the Publisher
Praise for Flags on the Bayou:
“The Civil War comes to New Iberia, Louisiana, the capital of Burke’s wondrous fictional empire… [Readers] may well agree that it’s his most probing examination of the enduring legacy of slavery… A grueling, compassionate demonstration that ‘the devil ain’t down in a fiery pit. He’s right here.’”—Kirkus (starred review)
“A stunning work. Man’s addiction to darkness and evil is on horrific display, yet love’s fierce light shines through the poorest of souls. With a belief in God’s grace and redemption, they demand the courage to seek it, against all odds. Often I had to reread a sentence or paragraph, smiling and shaking my head at the power of words assembled that evoke emotional landslides no one creates like James Lee Burke. Get this now. It will take you apart and heal you. Lord, what a magnificent book!”—Nils Lofgren, Member of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and Member of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse Band
Praise for James Lee Burke:
“James Lee Burke is the reigning champ of nostalgia noir.”—New York Times Book Review
“You can always count on Burke to deliver a white-hot page-turner.”—AARP Magazine
“Burke’s evocative prose remains a thing of reliably fierce wonder.”—Entertainment Weekly
“One of the finest novelists in North America.”—Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
“James Lee Burke is one of a small handful of elite suspense writers whose work transcends the genre, making the leap into capital-L Literature.”—Bookpage
Kirkus Reviews
2023-10-07
Eight stories, four of them new, continue the author’s career-long project of expanding the mystery genre to include bigger crimes like slavery and deeper mysteries like the nature of evil.
Two prison inmates set up to fight each other in “Big Midnight Special” move toward a finale that’s predictably eerie and violent but by no means inevitable. The romance in “The Wild Side of Life” is poisoned by echoes of racism and family history that doom it without opening the lovers’ troubled memories to new understanding. Aaron Holland Broussard and his grandfather, Hackberry Holland, both of them more than familiar to fans of Burke’s novels, run afoul of federal agents hunting down unauthorized Mexican immigrants in “Deportees,” and Aaron returns years later in “Strange Cargo,” the longest story here, haunted by his daughter’s death and eager to grasp his own from stomach cancer, to tangle with a bigoted sheriff, a prickly Black female detective, and a killer who’s apparently been transported from the past. The best stories are the most sharply focused: “Harbor Lights,” in which Aaron’s father, pressed by the FBI to keep quiet about a deadly German submarine that’s been shockingly close to the Louisiana coast, goes to a newspaper instead and sets off a deadly chain of events; “The Assault,” in which Professor Delbert Hatfield’s attempt to get justice for an attack against his brain-damaged daughter pits him against uncaring cops and neo-Nazis; and “A Distant War,” in which Francis Holland’s car trouble south of Colorado plunges him and his son into an inferno filled with racists, scammers, and a woman who claims she’s Jefferson Davis’ widow.
Burke’s not a polisher bent on perfecting every word but a bard who can’t help returning to each story over and over again.
