Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn't fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalized victim psychopaths usually prey upon. The death toll of suspects rises. As the body count increases the scope of suspicion lies in even bigger circles. But in spite of the bloody bound on which our town was built, and out of which oak trees and bamboo and banks of flowers along the bayou grew, it remained for me a magical place in the predawn hours, touched only cosmetically by the Industrial Age, the drawbridge clanking erect in the fog, it’s great cogged wheels bleeding rust, a two-story quarter boat that resembled a nineteenth-century paddle wheeler being pushed down to the Gulf, the fog billowing whitely around it, the air sprinkled with the smell of Confederate Jasmine.” The Glass Rainbow is elegant, sharp-edged, haunting and terrific,just like all Burke's novels. Dave's daughter Alafair is romantically involved with a man who is shepherding Alafair's first novel toward publication, but the company he keeps makes Dave justifiably nervous. As Dave goes on the offense, he uncovers links to several murders of young girls, and tries to steer Alafair away from the company she has chosen to keep. But nobody likes to be told who she can or can't fall in love with, and Alafair (naturally) insists that Dave has it all wrong. But we know (becsuse we've read 20 other Dave Robicheaux novels) that Dave is never wrong, and must watch as Alafair's heart beats a march toward disaster.

Its use in jewellery, whilst frowned upon by master craftsmen, has grown over recent years. All resin has the possibility of discoloring to an off-yellow, warping, or falling out due to shrinkage. You cannot get it wet or expose it to too much sun. This is why you won't find resin products in a true jewellery store but will find these products on a market stall. More of the same, for the most part, and that's just fine ... particularly because I took this one along on lengthy trip (with two long flights in each direction) - and when I wasn't sleeping on the planes, it kept me fully entertained. Adding to his troubles Dave's adopted daughter, Alafair, is home on a break from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel and she is in love with Kermit Abelard, a novelist himself, and scion of a once prominent Louisiana family. Abelard's association with bestselling ex-convict author Robert Weingart has Dave fearing for Alafair's safety. You know that Dave is right and a father knows best. Abelard and Weingart are toxic. Alafair may be all grown up now but she is still his daughter and he will always be there to protect her. Whether she likes it or not.This is the eighteenth entry in James Lee Burke's series featuring Dave Robicheaux, a detective in the sheriff's department in New Iberia, Louisiana, and it's distinguished principally by the fact that both Robicheaux and his long-time running buddy, Clete Purcel, are feeling their age and sensing that the end is near. For the last 6-7 entries, the series has been consistently good but formulaic. The Glass Rainbow however sizzles with a sense of impending doom that gives it an urgency the series has not seen in a long time. Add the best prose the genre has ever seen. And the only reason for not reading Burke as a crime fiction fan is if one finds the books too dark. But isn't it a bit like staying away from a stimulating and intelligent discussion because it is too smart for you? Rating - 5/5 I have had visions of them that I do not try to explain to other. Sometimes I thought I heard cries and shouts and the sounds of musket fire in the mist, because the Union soldiers who marched through Acadiana were turned loose upon the civilian populace as a lesson in terror. The rape of Negro women became commonplace. Northerners have never understood the nature of the crimes that were committed in their names, no more than neocolonials can understand the enmity their government creates in theirs. Their pastoral solemnity of a civil war graveyard doesn’t come close to suggesting the reality of war or the crucible of pain in which a solider lives and dies. Adding to Robicheaux's troubles is the matter of his daughter, Alafair, who is on leave from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard, celebrated novelist and scion of a once prominent Louisiana family whose fortunes are slowly sinking into the corruption of Louisiana's subculture. Abelard's association with bestselling ex-convict author Robert Weingart, a man who uses and discards people like Kleenex, causes Robicheaux to fear that Alafair might be destroyed by the man she loves. As his daughter seems to drift away from him, he wonders if he has become a victim of his own paranoia.

One that believed there was virtue in allowing memory to soften and revise the image of the deceased, that appearance was more important than substance, because ultimately appearance was, in its way, a fulfillment of aspiration. Dave has always had a chip on his shoulder when it comes to folks like the Abelards whom he feels have exploited the people and the land of his beloved native state for their own personal gain.

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Needless to say, then, Dave is not at all happy about Alafair's relationship with Abelard, and he's even less excited about the fact that the Abelards are hosting Robert Weingart, an ex-con-turned-writer who's being celebrated as the next great prison writer. Dave refuses to believe that Weingart has reformed and he believes that the Abelards are dupes or worse for allowing Weingart into their home. But naturally, when Dave attempts to warn Alafair of his concerns, she revolts against him and Dave runs the risk of losing his daughter. Have you ever smelled the magnolias, tasted the gumbo, seen the Spanish moss strung like Christmas garlands in the live oaks, heard the rain play on a tin roof, felt the damp salt breeze off the Gulf of Mexico? And the fleeting visions in the corner of your eye are indeed ghosts of an antebellum past, in the land of Marie Laveau. James Lee Burke's gifts are such that you will experience all of these things right there in your own home or in the coffee shop or on the evening train, even if you have never made it to New Orleans (NuOrlans) or south to New Iberia Parish. After 18 novels in the Dave Robicheaux series, I think I'm done with this. Burke has been running on fumes for the last couple of installments, and really seems to have run out of gas. Much as I hate to admit it, it's past time to retire this series.

Meanwhile, Dave is investigating the savage killings of several young local women. No one else seems to care at all about these victims, all of whom came from disadvantaged circumstances, but Dave is determined to pursue the cases, even though most of them lay outside of his jurisdiction. As always, Clete Purcel, who serves as Dave's alter ego, plays his usual role and blasts through the book like the proverbial bull in a china shop. There's a real chance that Clete's antics are finally going to catch up with him here, and all of these complex threads come together in a shattering climax. But THE GLASS RAINBOW doesn’t really focus on the investigation of these murders. Instead, a large part of the narrative is devoted to two threads: Dave’s adopted daughter Alafair’s serious relationship with Kermit Abelard, the author of historical novels and the son of a powerful robber baron; and the ongoing self-destructive behavior of his best friend and former partner, Clete Purcel. Alafair is working on a book of her own, and Kermit and his oily friend, Robert Weingart, are helping her find a publisher. Weingart is an ex-con and best-selling author. Needless to say, Dave has no use for any of these people, which leads to huge conflict with Alafair, who feels that Dave is trying to control her life. Weingard in particular is a reprehensible character, closely followed by Kermit’s father. Clete Purcel his ex-partner in upholding the law steps onto the scene and becomes part of the web. He’s a great addition to this story! As always in these books, the atmosphere looms large and, as has been the case in several of them, Dave's own family is at grave personal risk. In this case, it's his adopted daughter, Alafair, who is home on a break from college and struggling to complete a novel. Alafair begins a relationship with Kermit Abelard, the son of a family that has long constituted something of the local aristocracy.Burke is one of the few really good stylists working in genre fiction, but genre fiction depends upon plot, and there is virtually none here. Burke barely makes any effort to explain what lies behind the deaths of the two young girls which seems to be the central crime of the book, or what any of the key characters have to do with it. There's action, but very little reason for it. And, for that matter, almost all of the action is initiated by Dave and his pal, Clete Purcell, working to get a rise out of different bad guys, with no real justification except that Dave and Clete believe them to be bad guys. Consistent with the series, the prose was languid, the descriptions were evocative, the mayhem and madness never ceased, and the violence and brutality were deeply disturbing. Once I got past the halfway point (and became fully vested), I was highly disinclined to put it down. Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked at a wide variety of jobs over the years, including working in the oil industry, as a reporter, and as a social worker. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, succeeding his good friend and posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner John Kennedy Toole, and preceding Ernest Gaines in the position. Shortly before his move to Montana, he taught for several years in the Creative Writing program at Wichita State University in the 1980s. The main suspect in a serial killer case is acquainted with Alafair's (Robicheaux's daughter) latest boyfriend - Kermit Abelard. The Abelards are rich Southern landlords, the kind that has played antagonists to Robicheaux since the series started. It is nice to see Alafair making errors in judgment, she has been too perfect in previous entries. Highlights include a great gunfight and an ending that would have been a fitting finale to the series.