Police detective Dave Robicheaux faces off with the most diabolical villain he has ever faced in the twentieth installment of the Dave Robicheaux series. A summer getaway in Montana for Dave Robicheaux's family and friends is violently shattered by the arrival of serial killer and prison escapee Asa Surrette. He avoids the death penalty for murders he committed while capital punishment was banned in his home state of Kansas. But when Robicheaux's...

When last seen in The Glass Rainbow, the previous book in the Dave Robicheaux series, Robicheaux was recovering in a New Orleans hospital from a near-fatal bullet wound. Immobilized and heavily medicated by morphine, he was visited there by a beautiful Creole woman named Tee Jolie Melton. After she's gone, his fond, hazy remembrances of her are rekindled by one song, "Creole Belle" on the iPod that she left behind. Now obsessed by the song and thoughts...