Black Cherry Blues

⚖The case for it

Dave Robicheaux (Vietnam vet, Louisiana detective, recovering alcoholic) investigates a murder connected to his wife's death while struggling with his demons in Montana. Burke writes the best crime prose in American fiction: lyrical, precise, rooted in the South's beauty and violence. Edgar Award winner, 1990. The Robicheaux series runs 20+ novels of sustained excellence.

— the canon

✕The case against

Burke's prose repeats its rituals: every sky catalogued, every meal of dirty rice and boudin lovingly plated, every chapter pausing for Robicheaux's remorse. Dave's dead wife visits in dreams that stop the plot cold. And the pattern (warned off, beaten, explodes into violence, regrets it) was set two books in; here it merely happens in Montana.

— the honest librarian