The series that James Lee Burke began in 1987 with The Neon Rain has become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed detective series of the last decade. In the first novel, Robicheaux leaves the New Orleans Police Department for what he imagines to be the relative quiet of his hometown of New Iberia. Robicheaux marries Annie, a social worker he meets in the first novel, and they adopt Alafair in Heaven's Prisoners (1988). Burke carries on the doubling theme in this novel when Robicheaux acknowledges his similarities to the boyhood-friendturned-crirninal, Bubba Rocque. Black Cherry Blues (1989) furthers Robicheaux's inquiry into the past and its consequences for the present, and returns Cletus Purcel to the series, now working for organized crime.

Burke delves into a new form of doubling in A Morning for Flamingos (1989), in which Jimmie Lee Boggs (whose name bears strong resemblance to that of the...