When the country singer ex-wife of a U.S. president is sensationally murdered during a concert performance, forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett endeavors to learn the victim's role in her demise as well as the murder's relevance for the president.

Creole Belle begins where the last book in the Dave Robicheaux series, The Glass Rainbow, ended. Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where a Creole girl named Tee Jolie Melton visits him and leaves him an iPod with the country blues song 'Creole Belle' on it. Then she disappears. Dave becomes obsessed with the song and the memory of Tee Jolie and goes in search of her sister, who later turns up inside a block of ice floating in the Gulf. Meanwhile,...