The Light of the World - a Struggle Between Good and Evil

The Light of the World (2013) is another novel almost impossible to put down. It is a riveting mystery by James Lee Burke, a master storyteller hailed by critics as possibly the best American novelist writing today in any genre. This volume is the twentieth in the author’s acclaimed Dave Robicheaux series, a book a cataloguer at the Library of Congress aptly assigned the subject heading of “Good and Evil”. 

 The struggle between good and evil lies at the heart of the Robicheaux series. Light of the World is no exception—it is a powerful, insightful study of the nature of evil. The novel opens with Robicheaux, a Louisiana sheriff’s detective, on vacation in Montona with family and friends. There they find themselves hounded and haunted by a psychopathic serial killer, Asa Surrette, a man believed to have been killed in a horrific prison van crash.

 This spells big trouble for Dave, his old buddy Clete Purcel, Gretchen Horowitz, a contract killer last seen executing her father in Creole Belle (2012) and Alafair, Dave’s daughter and the ultimate target of Surrette’s pitiless wrath.   

 

Review by Peter Critchley of  the Vernon Branch