Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux finds himself living a nightmare when he is dispatched to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to search for a morphine-addicted priest, a vigilante, and two serial rapists in a city that has been reduced to the level of medieval society.

When last seen in The Glass Rainbow, the previous book in the Dave Robicheaux series, Robicheaux was recovering in a New Orleans hospital from a near-fatal bullet wound. Immobilized and heavily medicated by morphine, he was visited there by a beautiful Creole woman named Tee Jolie Melton. After she's gone, his fond, hazy remembrances of her are rekindled by one song, "Creole Belle" on the iPod that she left behind. Now obsessed by the song and thoughts...

A rash of murders has unemployed sleuth Dave Robicheaux rejoining the New Orleans sheriff's department where he searches for a serial killer while investigating a clue to the disappearance of a young prostitute years earlier, trying to stay clear of the mob, and becoming romantically involved with an unconventional nun.

Just when Dave Robicheaux thinks stability has come to his life, memories emerge to send the recovering alcoholic into a tailspin. It all begins with the appearance of a young woman named Trish Klein, who could be the daughter of one of Robicheaux's old crime partners. The suicide of another young woman named Yvonne Darbonne doesn't help his mood, either. Soon, Dave finds himself caught up in a web of connections linking the suicide to a Mafia thug...

"Detective Dave Robicheaux's world isn't filled with too many happy stories, but Desmond Cormier's rags-to-riches tale is certainly one of them. Robicheaux first met Cormier on the streets of New Orleans, when the young, undersized boy had foolish dreams of becoming a Hollywood director. Twenty-five years later, when Robicheaux knocks on Cormier's door, it isn't to congratulate him on his Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Robicheaux has...