“The captain was silhouetted on horseback like a piece of burnt iron against the sun,” that novel began. After finally making its way to print, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He proudly has noted that one of his first novels, The Lost Get-Back Boogie, was rejected by publishers more than 100 times. He grew up on the Texas-Louisiana coast, worked on an oil pipeline, and later as a college English teacher. He did not earn his reputation as a modern day William Faulkner, and the finest mystery novelist around - perhaps the finest novelist, period - without paying dues. James Lee Burke turns 76 next month and just published his 30th novel. That the stories have murder as their starting point seemed almost incidental, when Burke’s prose painted such rich portraits of canopies of live oaks, sunsets turning water blood red, and the gulf “dimpled by the leathery backs of stingrays.” What my friend enjoyed most about the novels was how, through Dave’s voice, Burke describes Louisiana’s gulf coast region. I also limited myself to nonfiction.īurke had a steep wall to climb to make it to my bookshelf.Įighteen of Burke’s novels star Dave Robicheaux, the tough yet philosophical detective, a Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic with an unwavering inner compass for doing the right thing at any cost. Just over 10 years ago my best friend suggested I read the mystery novelist James Lee Burke.īack then I was loyal to a few favourite authors and reluctant to embrace new ones. all of it on the tree-flooded alluvial rim of the world, where the tides and the course of the sun were the only measures of time.” “I wanted to drive deep into the Atchafalaya Swamp, past the confines of reason, into the past, into a world of lost dialects, gator hunters, busthead whiskey, cockfights, bloodred boudin, a jigger of Jim Beam lowered into a frosted schooner of draft.
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