Police detective Dave Robicheaux faces off with the most diabolical villain he has ever faced in the twentieth installment of the Dave Robicheaux series. Sadistic serial killer Asa Surette avoids the death penalty for murders he committed while capital punishment was banned. But when Robicheaux's daughter Alafair writes a series of articles implicating Surrette in other murders which could get him death, he decides to escape prison and make her pay....

"On his way to visit an inmate at a Texas prison who has promised him information, Detective Dave Robicheaux stops off at an amusement park to watch a teenaged Elvis-like rock-and-roller from his hometown of New Iberia named Johnny Shondell playing to a crowd of swooming young girls. One of them is another New Iberia teenager named Isolde Balangie. The Shondell and Balangie families are longtime rivals in the New Iberia criminal underworld. Yet Johnny...