Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Just who is capable of being redeemed, or redeeming themselves? James Lee Burke sets the question, and answers it in this one. Dave Robicheaux and Cletus Purcell take themselves off on vacation away from it all and pretty soon find that "it all" won't stay away from them. Sadistic murders, a wealthy family with buried agendas, an escaped prisoner, a former Al Graihib interrogator-cum-torturer and, of course, reformed alcoholic Roicheaux and his conflicted sidekick, both capable of, and prone to, uncontrollable excesses of violence and self-indulgence.

This one puts in all the usual twists and turns, and throws in a couple of surprises too; if there is one thing JLB is capable of (and, believe me, he is capable of lot's more than just one thing) it is that he is able to show us characters who are fully three-dimensional - capable of good and bad, driven by their pasts but still able to change.

One of the great modern American writers, and sadly overlooked because his books are "just" crime fiction. There's no "just" about it. Crime fiction is a vehicle for the truth in his hands.