Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel

Pegasus Descending: A Dave Robicheaux Novel

James Lee Burke

Simon Schuster (2006)

Tags: Mystery Detective, Fiction, Suspense, General, Mystery Fiction, Police Procedural, Police, Mystery, Mystery Detective - General, Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Women Sleuths, American Mystery Suspense Fiction, Hard-Boiled, Louisiana, Health Fitness, Dave (Fictitious Character), Robicheaux, New Iberia (La.), Police - Louisiana - New Iberia, New Iberia
Mystery Detectivettt Fictionttt Suspensettt Generalttt Mystery Fictionttt Police Proceduralttt Policettt Mysteryttt Mystery Detective - Generalttt Detectivettt Fiction - Mysteryttt Women Sleuthsttt American Mystery Suspense Fictionttt Hard-Boiledttt Louisianattt Health Fitnessttt Dave (Fictitious Character)ttt Robicheauxttt New Iberia (La.)ttt Police - Louisiana - New Iberiattt New Iberiattt

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on classical antecedents, bestseller Burke peoples his 15th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2004's
Crusader's Cross
) with his usual assortment of near mythic characters, demonstrating how our everyday lives are beset with age-old, universal dilemmas. New Iberia, La., detective Dave Robicheaux, for whom redemption has become a lifelong pursuit, suits up once again to tilt against villains both real and in his own troubled psyche. Twenty-five years earlier, the young alcohol-soaked cop witnessed his friend and fellow Vietnam vet, Dallas Klein, executed by a group of cold-blooded thugs. He was unable to intercede because he was plastered. Now, a young grifter who may be the victim's daughter, Trish Klein, has appeared in New Iberia, passing counterfeit money and baiting Whitey Bruxal, the aging mobster responsible for Dallas's death. Meanwhile, Dave investigates the apparent suicide of pretty young co-ed Yvonne Darbonne. Are the two cases linked? Dave thinks so, and he enlists longtime loose-cannon sidekick Clete Purcel to prove it. With peerless naturalistic descriptions and lush, metaphysical imagery, Burke creates another challenging morality play for his flawed, everyman hero.
(July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In James Lee Burke's novels, the past in never farther away than the ripples on the bayou outside Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia, Louisiana, home. This time it's Robicheaux's dark personal history--when the detective "was still going steady with Jim Beam straight up and a beer back"--that interferes with the tranquil present for newly married Dave. When Trish Klein turns up in New Iberia, it doesn't take long for Robicheaux to realize she is the daughter of his old friend, Dallas, who died in an armored-car robbery that Dave witnessed but was too drunk to stop. To make amends, Robicheaux must solve the several interconnected murders that track back to the man behind the armored-car hit. Everything that makes this series so compelling--the elegiac, seductively lyrical prose; the complex character of Robicheaux; the lovingly evoked bayou setting-- is here in abundance, and if it doesn't galvanize into something quite as special as the last episode,
Crusader's Cross
(2005), that's only because we've come to expect so much from this series. The fact remains that no serious reader of hard-boiled fiction should ever miss a moment of Dave Robicheaux in action.
Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on classical antecedents, bestseller Burke peoples his 15th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2004's
Crusader's Cross
) with his usual assortment of near mythic characters, demonstrating how our everyday lives are beset with age-old, universal dilemmas. New Iberia, La., detective Dave Robicheaux, for whom redemption has become a lifelong pursuit, suits up once again to tilt against villains both real and in his own troubled psyche. Twenty-five years earlier, the young alcohol-soaked cop witnessed his friend and fellow Vietnam vet, Dallas Klein, executed by a group of cold-blooded thugs. He was unable to intercede because he was plastered. Now, a young grifter who may be the victim's daughter, Trish Klein, has appeared in New Iberia, passing counterfeit money and baiting Whitey Bruxal, the aging mobster responsible for Dallas's death. Meanwhile, Dave investigates the apparent suicide of pretty young co-ed Yvonne Darbonne. Are the two cases linked? Dave thinks so, and he enlists longtime loose-cannon sidekick Clete Purcel to prove it. With peerless naturalistic descriptions and lush, metaphysical imagery, Burke creates another challenging morality play for his flawed, everyman hero.
(July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In James Lee Burke's novels, the past in never farther away than the ripples on the bayou outside Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia, Louisiana, home. This time it's Robicheaux's dark personal history--when the detective "was still going steady with Jim Beam straight up and a beer back"--that interferes with the tranquil present for newly married Dave. When Trish Klein turns up in New Iberia, it doesn't take long for Robicheaux to realize she is the daughter of his old friend, Dallas, who died in an armored-car robbery that Dave witnessed but was too drunk to stop. To make amends, Robicheaux must solve the several interconnected murders that track back to the man behind the armored-car hit. Everything that makes this series so compelling--the elegiac, seductively lyrical prose; the complex character of Robicheaux; the lovingly evoked bayou setting-- is here in abundance, and if it doesn't galvanize into something quite as special as the last episode,
Crusader's Cross
(2005), that's only because we've come to expect so much from this series. The fact remains that no serious reader of hard-boiled fiction should ever miss a moment of Dave Robicheaux in action.
Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

By the Same Author

D
AVE
R
OBICHEAUX NOVELS

Crusader’s Cross

Last Car to Elysian Fields

Jolie Blon’s Bounce

Purple Cane Road

Sunset Limited

Cadillac Jukebox

Burning Angel

Dixie City Jam

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

A Stained White Radiance

A Morning for Flamingos

Black Cherry Blues

Heaven’s Prisoners

The Neon Rain

B
ILLY
B
OB
H
OLLAND NOVELS

In the Moon of Red Ponies

Bitterroot

Heartwood

Cimarron Rose

O
THER FICTION

White Doves at Morning

The Lost Get-Back Boogie

The Convict

Two for Texas

Lay Down My Sword and Shield

To The Bright and Shining Sun

Half of Paradise

SIMON & SCHUSTER

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New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by James Lee Burke

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Title page photograph © Corbis

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burke, James Lee.

p. cm.

Pegasus descending: a Dave Robicheaux novel / James Lee Burke.

1. Robicheaux, Dave (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Louisiana—New Iberia—Fiction. 3. New Iberia (La.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.U732P44 2006

813’.54—dc22        2006040341

ISBN: 0-7432-9348-7

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For our grandchildren—

James Parker McDavid, Emma Marie Walsh,
Jack Owen Walsh, and James Lee Burke IV

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

—John 16:12