Crusader's Cross

This is the 14th (2005) in James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" series, set as most of them are in the bayou country of Louisiana. We are taken back to a summer when Dave and his half-brother Jimmie were working oil in Texas as young men and Jimmie falls in love with a woman who rescues them off the beach in Galveston. Unfortunately, the woman he falls for, Ida Durbin, is a hooker and before they can run away together, someone takes her forcefully and they never see her again. But a dying man's confession leads Dave to think that Ida might still be alive and when he tells Jimmie, nothing will stop him from trying to find her. Meanwhile, Dave is back on the police force as a detective and when he investigates a local wealthy family that he think might be tied to Ida's disappearance, he inevitably gets crossways with pretty ruthless people. He seduces a lay nun, and that causes a scandal, providing fodder for someone trying to destroy Robichaux's credibility.  Dave's guilt triggers a slip and he goes off the wagon and is barely pulled back from the brink of self-destruction by his new love and by his old friend, Clete Purcell. When a serial killer that has been operating in New Orleans apparently commits murder closer to home in Iberia Parish, Dave gets suspended from the police department after his fingerprints turn up at the  crimes scene and, because he was in an alcoholic blackout at the time, he's not even sure he didn't kill the woman.
These are dark and gritty tales about fallible good people and bad people who once in a while do good things. The descriptions of struggling with alcoholism ring painfully true and so are sometimes hard to take. Burke as always is a superb story teller with rich, flawed characters, and atmospheric settings.  
Review from Kirkus.