Detective Dave Robicheaux's world isn't filled with too many happy stories, but Desmond Cormier's rags-to-riches tale is certainly one of them. Robicheaux first met Cormier on the streets of New Orleans, when the young, undersized boy had foolish dreams of becoming a Hollywood director. Twenty-five years later, when Robicheaux knocks on Cormier's door, it isn't to congratulate him on his Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Robicheaux has discovered...

"On his way to visit an inmate at a Texas prison who has promised him information, Detective Dave Robicheaux stops off at an amusement park to watch a teenaged Elvis-like rock-and-roller from his hometown of New Iberia named Johnny Shondell playing to a crowd of swooming young girls. One of them is another New Iberia teenager named Isolde Balangie. The Shondell and Balangie families are longtime rivals in the New Iberia criminal underworld. Yet Johnny...