In The Electric Mist

New Iberia, Louisiana. Detective Dave Robicheaux is hunting down a serial killer responsible for the deaths of several young women. Returning from yet another horrifying crime scene he meets Hollywood star Elrod T. Sykes. The star, who is currently in town shooting his latest film financed by ‘Baby Feet’ Balboni, the local hood, tells Dave that he has seen floating in the swamp the partially decomposed body of a black man in chains. The discovery unleashes painful memories of a previous case for Robicheaux. At the same time he begins to suspect that the two cases are somehow connected. But the closer Robicheaux’s investigations bring him to the murderer, the closer the murderer gets to Robicheaux’s own family …
Bertrand Tavernier last approached the hard-boiled thriller in 1981 when he brought Jim Thompson’s book “Pop. 1280” to the screen in COUP DE TORCHON. His latest film is based on American crime writer James Lee Burke’s “Into the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead”. In COUP DE TORCHON, Tavernier transposed Thompson’s novel to 1930s Senegal, which was a French colony at the time. IN THE ELECTRIC MIST was set in original American locations. The film marks the first US production for Tavernier, who is a great admirer of James Lee Burke: “He has a special voice among the film noir writers – if I had been able to transpose it to France, I would have.”