In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

An excellent fictional novel that has gone unnoticed for too long is about to come into light for all who read this post. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke is a mysterious novel about a movie crew that moves to Louisiana to film a Civil War epic. The story follows the sheriff, Dave Robicheaux, in which they are shooting the film and he is on the edge of loosing his job, as his past in the New Iberia, Louisiana Police Department has been far from successful. But when this movie crew comes to town, his luck changes direction as he steps into some new information regarding crimes in the area.
The story begins with the discovery of a body in the woods near New Iberia. It is Cherry LaBlanc, a black nineteen year-old pole dancer and prostitute, who has been brutally tortured and disemboweled. No one even tries to believe what LaBlanc is saying, nor do they even care, as to the time and history of the area they are in. Many of the events that take place in this novel happen in the minds of the characters in the novel, especially Robicheaux, his dreams and internal dialogues are the most prevalent ways to understand what he is thinking. One dream consists of a black man that is chained and later driven into the water, where he is shot; another is of Confederates camping and sitting around a fire in the woods. Robicheaux’s dreams go on to prove themselves central to the plot. The first thought upon discovering this novel was that it was going to be an excellent read, even though one is not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but as i looked further into the pages i discovered that this had all the makings to fulfill my initial thoughts. I strongly suggest this novel to anyone who likes to read mysteries also enjoys reading the internal thoughts of the characters, rather than a read full of dialogue.