Dave Robicheaux


Dave Robicheaux is a fictional character in a series of mystery novels by American crime writer James Lee Burke.

Biography

Once an officer for the New Orleans Police Department, Robicheaux constantly breaches the ethical code over the course of just about every case he works on and currently pursues cases in New Iberia, Louisiana as sheriff's deputy. He is a recovering alcoholic whose demons stem from his service as a U.S. Army infantry lieutenant in the Vietnam War and his impoverished difficult childhood in rural Louisiana; his mother abandoned the family and his father died in an oil rig explosion.
He still experiences periods of savage depression and nightmares, which are only exacerbated by the murder of his wife Annie Ballard, a social worker. He married a mobster's widow Bootsie, a lupus sufferer, and adopted the El Salvadorean orphan Alafair, after he saves her from the wreckage of an airplane. After Bootsie's death he weds a strong minded former Maryknoll nun by the name of Molly.
His best friend is the violent, alcoholic, ex-police officer, private investigator, and bail-bondsman Cletus Purcel.
Robicheaux is described as 54 years old in the introduction to the Recorded Books CD edition of Black Cherry Blues, but, in the third track of the audiobook, Robicheaux describes himself as 49 years old. In the fourth audio track, Robicheaux introduces Dixie Lee Pugh, "my freshman roommate at Southwest Louisiana Institute in 1956," which would put his birth year circa 1938 if he enrolled when he was around 18.

Novels

  1. The Neon Rain
  2. Heaven's Prisoners
  3. Black Cherry Blues
  4. A Morning for Flamingos
  5. A Stained White Radiance
  6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
  7. Dixie City Jam
  8. Burning Angel
  9. Cadillac Jukebox
  10. Sunset Limited
  11. Purple Cane Road
  12. Jolie Blon's Bounce
  13. Last Car to Elysian Fields
  14. Crusader's Cross
  15. Pegasus Descending
  16. The Tin Roof Blowdown
  17. Swan Peak
  18. The Glass Rainbow
  19. Creole Belle
  20. Light of the World
  21. Robicheaux
  22. The New Iberia Blues

    Appearances in movies

Robicheaux is played by Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners and by Tommy Lee Jones in In the Electric Mist.