JAMES LEE BURKE, página 2 de 4

When 16-year-old Weldon Avery Holland encounters the notorious Bonnie and Clyde in his Texas hometown, the course of his young life is altered forever. He dedicates himself to fighting evil wherever he finds it. But it's the 1930s and evil is sweeping the globe as the Nazis rise. When war breaks out, Holland finds himself in Germany, irrevocably scarred by scenes of death and destruction. Peacetime brings apparent bliss, and Holland is offered a path to wealth and luxury by the enigmatic 'Wayfaring Stranger'. But soon, he discovers that the greed, violence and ruthlessness of war are nothing compared to the depths of human cruelty at play here.

Un sommergibile nazista giace sui fondali al largo della costa di New Orleans. Non aspetta piu al varco le petroliere che salpano da Baton Rouge, come mezzo secolo fa, ma continua a irradiare il suo alone malefico. E lo sceriffo Dave Robicheaux, che ha cominciato a cercare il relitto quasi per gioco, deve fare i conti col peggior incubo che gli possa capitare: uno psicopatico neonazista che comincia a introdursi nella sua vita con la violenza fisica e quella psicologica, fino a portarlo sull'orlo della pazzia.

Una nuova avventura di Dave Robicheaux, il detective Cajun reduce dal Vietnam ed ex tenente della squadra omicidi di New Orleans. Per scacciare i fantasmi del passato, e andato a vivere con la famiglia sulla costa della Louisiana, dove affitta barche ai turisti e spesso si trova coinvolto in intrighi da risolvere. Questa volta deve proteggere un gruppo di famiglie che da secoli sono insediate sulle terre di un grande proprietario e ora sono minacciate di sgombero. Quello che sembra soltanto un caso di ordinaria prepotenza si trasforma presto in qualcosa di piu serio: nel gioco e coinvolta la mafia locale, reduci del Vietnam e della controguerriglia centroamericana, servizi segreti, trafficanti di droga, giocatori d'azzardo.

Dave Robicheaux, reduce del Vietnam ed ex tenete della squadra omicidi di New Orleans, e un originale personaggio noir di questi anni. Per scacciare i fantasmi del passato, e andato a vivere con la famiglia sulla costa della Louisiana, dove affitta barche ai turisti. Ma e da questo mondo sospeso tra terra e acqua, boschi e paludi che emerge un fantasma del passato.

James Lee Burke's new novel begins in West Texas in 1934, and the story begins with a fateful encounter between the narrator, Weldon Avery Holland, and the notorious Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker - a meeting which ends with the sixteen-year-old Holland putting a bullet through the windscreen of Clyde's stolen automobile. Weldon's education in the evils that men - and women - are capable of continues as we move to the Ardennes Forest and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, where Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland saves his sergeant, Hershel Pine, from death by suffocation when he is buried alive in his foxhole under the treads of a Waffen SS Tiger tank. Weldon and Hershel survive the executions of the wounded by the SS and escape on a freight train deep into Nazi Germany. There, they stumble into an extermination camp deserted by the SS, and discover among the stacked bodies a young woman named Rosita Lowenstein - the second woman to change Weldon's life. Weldon goes all the way to the Elbe River in the war's brutal climax, but afterwards he is determined to find Rosita - eventually tracking her down in Paris, where they get married. But Hershel has also found gold in the dross of conflict, claiming to have discovered the secret to the Tiger tank's indestructibility, its unique welding process - and on their return to the States, it looks as if the two friends have not merely survived; they're going to be rich. But as the two form a pipeline corporation and enter the oil business, they are about to encounter - amidst the super-rich of Huston - levels of greed and cruelty they thought they had left far behind in the blood and horror of war.

When Detective Dave Robicheaux''s daughter, Alafair, declares her intention to interview a convicted serial killer called Asa Surette, he does all he can to dissuade her. Dave has always encouraged her ambitions as a writer, but as a father he doesn''t want her to be exposed to a man so nakedly evil. And his fears seem well founded when Alafair is visibly shocked by the encounter.Two years later, the horror Surette evoked is all but forgotten, as Dave and his family are vacationing amidst the natural beauty of Montana. But evil, it seems, has followed them into this wild paradise. Someone is stalking Alafair, and Dave begins to suspect that it''s Surette - even though he officially died when the prison truck he was being transported in collided with an oil tanker. Is Alafair now the target of one of the most depraved serial killers ever to have been caught, or has she unwittingly crossed paths with a murderous psychopath closer to home?

A routine assignment transporting two death-row prisoners to their executions goes fatally wrong, leaving Dave Robicheaux brutally wounded and his partner dead.Obsessed with revenge, Dave is persuaded by the DEA to go undercover into the torrid sleepy depths of New Orleans, a volatile world of Mafia drug-running and Cajun voodoo magic. He becomes irrevocably snarled in the nightmarish web surrounding Mafia don Tony Cardo and must put himself against his own worst fears in order to survive.

New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke brings readers a captivating tale of justice, love, brutality, and mysticism set in the turbulent 1960s.The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs.Jumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Joanne McDuffy, an articulate and fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their romance is complicated by Joanne's involvement with a shady professor who is mixed up with a drug-addled cult. When a sinister businessman and his son who wield their influence through vicious cruelty set their sights on Aaron, drawing him into an investigation of grotesque murders, it is clear that this idyllic landscape harbors tremendous power-and evil. Followed by a mysterious shrouded figure who might not be human, Aaron will have to face down all these foes to save the life of the woman he loves and his own.

Signing up for the Confederacy, Willie Burke and his friends are transported from their fairly insulated world in Louisiana onto a national stage as the Civil War rages around them, placing slaves and slave-owners, abolitionists, prostitutes, and soldiers in their paths.