A Stained White Radiance

Another dark rhapsody on Burke’s favorite themes–power and vengeance, organized crime, maverick Louisiana lawmen, and nightmares from Vietnam–all pulled together more tightly than ever by the Sonnier family, threatened by somebody (oilman brother Weldon’s mob contacts? televangelist brother Lyle’s stray sheep? sister Drew’s old political enemies? brother-in-law Bobby Earl’s followers in the Aryan Nation? hateful paterfamilias Verise, long presumed dead in a tanker explosion?) who first shoots out Weldon’s window and then executes a cop in the family basement. There’ll be more violence–much more–and enough guilt for everybody, as New Iberia detective Dave Robicheaux, instead of maundering over the issues, as in Black Cherry Blues (1989) and A Morning for Flamingos (1990), turns in his finest performance to date. By no means a well-made detective story–the Sonniers’ coincidental bad luck rivals Job’s–but a wholly original tale of crime and revenge, inside and outside the law.