The work of Aaron Brumbelow (M.F.A., photography, 2013; B.F.A., photography, 2008)
explores fictional realms while referencing early American photographic histories.
The plot itself, the investigation of the murder of two black men in the ninth ward, hinges on familiar Burke tropes — the powerless caught in a web of circumstance; surprising acts of nobility from the least likely people; unfathomable evil prompting eruptions of Robicheaux's thinly suppressed rage — but the novel's power comes from the way it
explores the tragedy of Katrina in a manner that is exactly in tune with the series, a kind of perfect storm brought together by the confluence of
fictional and nonfictional
realms.