Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland) - Tapa dura

James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed. (Michael Connelly)

A gorgeous prose stylist. (Stephen King)

Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced. (Daily Mail)

There are not many crime writers about whom one might invoke the name of Zola for comparison, but Burke is very much in that territory. His stamping ground is the Gulf coast, and one of the great strengths of his work has always been the atmospheric background of New Orleans and the bayous. His big, baggy novels are always about much more than the mechanics of the detective plot; his real subject, like the French master, is the human condition, seen in every situation of society. (Independent)

The king of Southern noir. (Daily Mirror)

His lyrical prose, his deep understanding of what makes people behave as they do, and his control of plot and pace are masterly. (Sunday Telegraph)

One of the finest American writers. (Guardian)

When it comes to literate, pungently characterised American crime writing, James Lee Burke has few peers. (Daily Express)

Burke gives us some wonderful dialogue between flawed characters reaching for higher truths, and some wickedly pungent descriptive passages ... superb writing. (Siobhan Murphy METRO)

Menacingly dark but with chinks of glittering perception, Lee Burke is the king of Southern noir. This complicated but utterly compelling tale finds Sheriff Hackberry Holland in a three-way manhunt - and it's the religious maniac who's most disturbing. (Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR)