New Orleans Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with police brass, with killers and hustlers, and the bottle. Lost without his wife’s love, Robicheaux haunts the intense and heady French Quarter—the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the seedy world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down the criminal underworld and come to terms with his own bruised heart and demons to survive.

There was a kind of a plot. A black woman had been found dead in a bayou, and the cop is convinced she’s been murdered, while no one else seems very interested. However, the story takes second place to the chest-beating hero bantering aggressively with the villains, and a vast assortment of violence. I got halfway through before giving up.

The hero is a dour alcoholic, the villains are nasty and brutish, and it’s all something that has been done better thousands of times.

Not worth the time to continue reading. Skipped to the end after about 100 pages. New Orleans is a place I really want to visit but it seems as though the author is writing as though reading from a travel brochure.