Amazon.co.uk Review
In Pegasus Descending, we are once again back in the comfortable (if eventful) company of Dave Robicheaux, Burke's long-time protagonist. Dave has finally brought his excessive drinking under control, but still suffers from guilt over a tragic event that he was unable to prevent due to his drunkenness. A friend of Dave’s, a gambling addict, had died in an armed robbery that he had been forced into. After the passage of many years, various events in Dave's life have brought him back into the orbit of the individuals responsible for this violent death.
As readers of Burke will realise from this, Dave is completely unable to let the past rest, and becomes dangerously involved, this time with some very sinister men. In such books as Lay Down My Sword and Shield, The Lost Get-back Boogie and Cimarron Rose (the latter book won the prestigious Edgar award, as did the equally impressive Black Cherry Blues), James Lee Burke has carved out a territory that is very much his own. While the plotting of his novels is as adroit as one could wish, Burke is one of the latter-day descendants of Raymond Chandler who has learned a very important message from the Master: it’s character and atmosphere that counts most in sprawling American narratives like this, and in this area, Burke is nonpareil among current practitioners. As ever, observations on the social mores of the day are folded into the narrative, but at the centre of it all is, as ever, the wonderfully drawn Dave Robicheaux. --Barry Forshaw
Review
'Penned by multi-award-winning Burke, this is noir mystery writing at its best. ... With a compulsive plot woven in Burke's seductive, elegiac style, this is a stylishly dark tale of redemption.' (PSYCHOLOGIES magazine )
'When it comes to literate, pungently characterised American crime writing, James Lee Burke has few peers.' (Barry Forshaw DAILY EXPRESS )
'Quite superb.' (Matthew Lewin THE GUARDIAN )
'the 15th of James Lee Burke's David Robicheaux novels, and one of the best - and that is saying something. Burke is the most poetic and lyrical of today's American crime writers; ... In other hands, Pegasus Descending would be merely a gritty noir novel featuring a tough tormented cop. But Burke turns it into an elegaic, almost mystical tale of human frailty, redemption , vengence and loyalty.' (Marcel Berlins THE TIMES )
'Burke is a cracking storyteller and a wonderful writer whose limpid prose evokes the lushness and mysteriousness of the steamy bayous, where danger and decay lurk just beneath the seemingly placid surfaces, and the darkness and violence in the souls of some of Louisiana's human inhabitants is treated masterfully. After 12 outings, Dave Robicheaux's ongoing struggle with his personal demons remains remarkably fresh and interesting. Don't miss this one.' (Myles McWeeney IRISH INDEPENDENT )
'Never before has Burke assembled such a Dickensian array of characters ... each one is sketched visually and linguistically with captivating vividness, and as an ensemble they provide an elite-to-underclass panorama of a state Purcel describes as 'a fresh-air mental asylum.'' (John Dugdale THE SUNDAY TIMES )
