Five years after his last case in far-off Montana (Light of the World, 2013), sometime sheriff's detective Dave Robicheaux returns to Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for another 15 rounds of high-fatality crime, alcohol-soaked ruminations, and heaven-storming prose.Jimmy Nightingale's silver-tongued charm may destine him for the Senate, but he's certainly mixing with some dark powers along the way, most notably his backer Fat Tony Nemo, who's made his bones in politics, porn, and drugs. As part owner of a financial company that's issued a reverse mortgage on the house owned by Dave's old buddy Clete Purcel, Tony ends up with a fistful of Clete's markers, squeezes him hard, and isn't impressed when Dave borrows money of his own to retire the debt. Jimmy himself seems invincible until he's accused of rape by Rowena Broussard, the painter and photographer whose husband is eccentric novelist Levon Broussard, whose Civil War fiction Tony would love to film. When Jimmy indignantly protests his innocence, Dave points out, "People do things when they're drunk that they would never do sober." And Dave should know, because he himself is suspected of getting blasted and killing T. J. Dartez, the truck driver who accidentally killed Molly, Dave's third wife. Listening to Clete talk about Kevin Penny, the abusive father who's run off after getting bailed out of jail, Dave little knows how deeply implicated Penny will be in the two other cases he's entangled in. Fans of Burke's fiction who recognize the familiar types he evokes so powerfullythe corrupt politician, the plausible mobster, the attractive but damaged woman, the bully who preys on the weak and helplesseagerly await the arrival of another stock character, the crazy hired killer who'll purify the landscape as remorselessly as a flash fire, and immediately recognize him in the person of Chester "Smiley" Wimple, who takes it upon himself to kill everyone who needs killing and a few who maybe don't.Despite a plot and a cast of characters formulaic by Burke's standards (though wholly original for anyone else), the intimations of mortality that have hovered over this series for 30 years have never been sharper or sadder. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

ENEMIES AND NEIGHBORS: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, by Ian Black. (Atlantic Monthly, $30.) Black, a veteran correspondent for The Guardian, argues in this sweeping history that Zionism and Palestinian nationalism were irreconcilable from the start, and that peace is as remote as ever. THE KING IS ALWAYS ABOVE THE PEOPLE: Stories, by Daniel Alarcon. (Riverhead Books, $27.) The stories in this slim, affecting work of fiction feature young men in various states of displacement after dictatorship yields to fragile democracy in an unnamed country. Alarcon, who also happens to be a gifted journalist, couples narrative experimentation with imaginative empathy. TEXAS BLOOD: Seven Generations Among the Outlaws, Ranchers, Indians, Missionaries, Soldiers, and Smugglers of the Borderlands, by Roger D. Hodge. (Knopf, $28.95.) Hodge's fervent pastiche of memory and reportage and history tells the story of South Texas as it intersects with generations of his ancestors. SOLAR BONES, by Mike McCormack. (Soho Press, $25.) A civil engineer sits in his kitchen feeling inexplicably disoriented, as if untethered from the world. In fact, he is dead, a ghost, even if he does not realize it. This wonderfully original book owes a debt to modernism but is up to something all its own. ISTANBUL: A Tale of Three Cities, by Bettany Hughes. (Da Capo, $40.) A British scholar known for her popular television documentaries shows readers how a prehistoric settlement evolved through the centuries into a great metropolis, the crossroads where East meets West. THE WRITTEN WORLD: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization, by Martin Puchner. (Random House, $32.) Puchner, an English professor at Harvard, makes the case for literature's pervasive importance as a force that has shaped the societies we have built and our very sensibilities as human beings. THE FLOATING WORLD, by C. Morgan Babst. (Algonquin, $26.95.) An inescapable, almost oppressive sense of loss permeates each page of this powerful debut novel about a mixed-race New Orleans family in the days after Hurricane Katrina. As an elegy for a ruined city, it is infused with soulful details. ROBICHEAUX, by James Lee Burke. (Simon & Schuster, $27.99.) The Iberia Parish sheriff's detective tangles with mob bosses and crooked politicians in this latest installment in a crime series steeped in the history and lore of the Louisiana bayous. THREE FLOORS UP, by Eshkol Nevo. (Other Press, paper, $16.95.) Three linked novellas about life in an Israeli apartment building capture the lies we tell ourselves and others in order to construct identity. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic who struggles with his Vietnam War experiences and the death of his wife a year earlier. After a recent relapse at a local bar, Robicheaux confronts Dartez, the man who killed his wife in a car accident. Shortly thereafter, Dartez is murdered, and Robicheaux, who was one of the last people to see the man, soon becomes a suspect in the crime he was assigned to investigate. Meanwhile, a local woman is raped, and a hired assassin roams around the area, killing everyone he confronts. Robicheaux must work to clear his name as he collaborates with others to solve the crimes. Verdict Two-time Edgar Award winner, recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in fiction, and New York Times best seller Burke (Cadillac Jukebox; Light of the World) delivers another excellent thriller in the Robicheaux series that stands on its own. Readers of Robert B. Parker's and Michael Connelly's novels will enjoy the harrowed protagonist and the back-and-forth dialog.-Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Burke (Light of the World) once again features Dave Robicheaux-detective, veteran, widower, father, alcoholic-in this enthralling yet grim novel of crime, hate, and tragedy. Robicheaux may be at home in New Iberia, La., but he's not safe from suspicion and self-doubt when the man who killed his wife is murdered. Together with his best friend, PI Clete Purcell, Robicheaux seeks truth, no matter how incriminating, even as more bodies fall and mysteries twine together. The cast is Shakespearean in its variety: a demagogue, a novelist, the mob, good cops and bad, victims of hubris and hate, and ghosts aplenty. No one here is blameless amid white supremacy, bigotry, misogyny, child abuse, flourishing sex and drug trades, and deep socioeconomic inequity, and Robicheaux and Clete never shy away from confronting what they see as the world's evils. But as the stakes get higher, the friends-who are more than happy to risk themselves-must decide what it will take to protect those they love and respect. Along the way, Burke investigates accusations of rape, corporate colonialism, and Southern nostalgia, not always without his own bias. The novel's murders and lies-both committed with unsettling smiles-will captivate, start to finish. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* The demons that haunt Dave Robicheaux are raising havoc again, but they're invading more than his dreams in this twenty-first installment in Burke's celebrated series. Reeling from the sudden death of his wife, Molly, in a car accident, the New Iberia, Louisiana, police detective falls off the wagon and, while drunk, may have killed the man he holds responsible for Molly's death may have because the alcohol-induced blackout has left him with no memory of the night in question. Robicheaux's other demon, the past his conflicted sense of his Cajun heritage set against the blood-stained legacy of the Civil War is also intensifying its grip on his consciousness. The battalion of Confederate soldiers the boys in butternut that he occasionally sees in the mists hanging over the bayou are now inviting him into the next world. This world has its demons, too, in the form of a senatorial candidate with a dark past, a revered novelist whose own butternut visions are spiraling out of control, and a psychotic killer on a mission of death. Fighting his internal and external battles, Robicheaux turns to his longtime running mate, Clete Purcell, every bit as demon-ravaged as Dave, and, together, the former Bobbsey Twins of the New Orleans PD set out to take no prisoners. Burke is known for his lyrical, deeply melancholic prose, and once again it permeates every page of this profoundly elegiac novel. We tend to forget, however, that he is no slouch at plotting and at constructing hold-your-breath action scenes. Both traits are in evidence here, the former in the way he nimbly juggles the multiple strands of his narrative, the latter in the barn-burner of a climax that evoking The Manchurian Candidate has the senator preparing to give a speech while the psycho positions himself for a kill shot, and Dave and Clete give chase. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Burke is one of crime fiction's most revered authors, a two-time Edgar winner whose place on the NYT best-seller list has been reserved in perpetuity.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2018 Booklist