"My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against a molten sun." I read the first paragraph, then the rest of the short first chapter, and then I put to one side the book I'd been reading (Carol O'Connel's Shark Music) and started on chapter 2. I should have known. I should have known because there is no such thing as a bad novel by James Lee Burke. He writes novels which vary in degrees of excellence, that's all. In particular his Dave Robicheaux series of novels are at the forefront of American crime fiction. You must read James Lee Burke because if you haven't, you haven't read the best. Burke writes prose as powerful as his characters -the haunted aging cop Dave Robicheaux who is driven more by his sense of morality than his adherence to the law, and his monolithic ex-cop partner in crime Clete Purcell- it isn't brutal but it is driven. What stands out in this novel, for me at least and even more than the chaotic drowned city, is the portrayal of a young man striving for redemption against the horrible sins he's committed even though he wouldn't know what the word meant, least of all how to spell it. I've given this a five star review because I couldn't give it, more accurately, four and a half.