Robicheaux and Rebels

According to Cinematical, James Lee Burke’s 1993 novel, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead--the sixth outing for Louisiana cop-turned-P.I. Dave Robicheaux--is going to be made into a movie. Writes contributor Chris Ullrich:

The film, which is being directed by French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, of Round Midnight and the recent Holy Lola, centers on Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux who is tracking the murderer of a local hooker and [trying to] tie the crime to New Orleans mobster Julie Balboni who is in town producing a Civil War epic. Convinced that Balboni is guilty of the hooker’s murder and also may be responsible for a string of serial-killer-like other slayings, Robicheaux goes outside the law to nail him.

This will be the second of Burke’s Robicheaux novels to be adapted by Hollywood. The previous result was Heaven’s Prisoners, a 1996 production that asked us to swallow Alec Baldwin with a Southern accent in the lead role (I, for one, could not), and really didn’t make much of an impression ... except for Teri Hatcher’s all-too-brief nude appearance on a balcony.

Let’s hope for more worth watching in Electric Mist.