Part of Dave Robicheaux, book 11
First published 2001
Dave Robicheaux thought his mother Mae Guillory was lost to him forever. She died when he was young, leaving him with an alcoholic father and a lifetime of unanswered questions. Dave accepted he would never know what really happened to the woman who abandoned him. Then a pimp recognizes him on the street and asks if he's Mae Guillory's boy, the prostitute some cops killed thirty years back. The man claims corrupt officers dumped her body in the bayou and still walk free in New Orleans. This revelation shatters everything Dave believed about his past. His investigation into Mae's murder forces him into the darkest corners of his own history. As he tracks down his mother's killers, Dave discovers what it truly means to be Mae Guillory's son. The case becomes more than police work. It becomes a reckoning with family legacy and the weight of inherited pain.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: family-legacy, inherited-pain, investigative-journalism
Setting: Bayou, New Orleans
Period: 1980s
387 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Dell
Content warnings: death