The Glass Rainbow

James Lee Burke writes Louisiana-based police thrillers that aim to rise to the level of literature, and he sometimes succeeds. In The Glass Rainbow, Deputy Sheriff Robicheaux investigates the violent murders of two teenage girls in Iberia Parish. Burke’s prose is alternately overwritten and incisive: “He stared at a silhouette that disconnected itself from a bottle brush tree then stood framed against the moonlight that shimmered like a white flame on the bayou."