Dave Robicheaux (pronounced "ROW-bih-show") is a fictional character in a series of mystery novels by American crime writer James Lee Burke.
He is a recovering alcoholic[1] whose demons stem from his service as a U.S. Army lieutenant in the Vietnam War[2] and his impoverished, difficult childhood in rural Louisiana.
[3] He still experiences periods of major depressive disorder and nightmares, which are only exacerbated by the murder of his wife Annie Ballard, a social worker.
[3] He married a mobster's widow, Bootsie, a lupus sufferer, and adopted an El Salvadoran orphan Alafair (the namesake of Burke's own daughter), after he saves her from the wreckage of an airplane.
Robicheaux is played by Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners[4] and by Tommy Lee Jones in In the Electric Mist.