The series which James Lee Burke began with The Neon Rain has become one of the most popular detective series in recent years.

Robicheaux marries Annie, and they adopt a young girl from a plane crash in Heaven's Prisoners (1988). Burke continues the theme of doubling in this novel, and Robicheaux acknowledges his similarities to the boyhood-friend-turned-criminal, Bubba Rocque.

Black Cherry Blues (1989) furthers Robicheaux's investigation of the past and its affect on the present, and returns Cletus Purcel to the series, now working for the Mafia. Burke explores doubling in a new dimension in A Morning for Flamingos (1989), in which Jimmie Lee Boggs (whose name could not be much closer to James Lee Burke) shoots Robicheaux, who then goes undercover to capture fellow Vietnam veteran and family man Tony Cardo. In A Stained White Radiance (1992), Burke adds incest to the list of familiar Southern themes included in...