James Lee Burke - Top Fiction Crime USA

Crime Writer Par Excellence

James Lee Burke - Best selling crime writer - one of the top fiction mystery authors - Gee – I feel I am repeating myself as I think I have said many of the same type of thing about a few of the authors I have included so far on this site – but blame the authors – for being so good! No churned out pulp fiction or formulaic writing and contrived plots for this author of great mystery novels.

A writer of quietly exquisite prose – an almost an elegiac writing style – that breathes atmosphere from the very page and is so evocative of the place (the Louisiana bayous) you can feel it even if you haven’t been there.Up there with Harry Bosch and Matt Scudder, Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is a protagonist worth reading every book for. And, almost on an equal par is his other ‘hero’ Billy Bob Holland (Cimarron Rose; In the Moon of the Red Ponies).

The Robicheaux series began with the 1987’s “The Neon Rain” which signaled a standard of storytelling that has not only been maintained but matured like a fine wine.

His books are at once pensive, delicately paced – as befits the South - and Burke finds the flaws in people; but flaws that are the mystery that enables them to succeed in their humanity as he writes of the confrontation of evil by ordinary folk, the juxtaposition of natural beauty and human violence, the poetic distillation of working class life in the American South.

As with Michael Connelly and in the other great mystery novels mentioned here, Burke manages to hook you into the lives of his characters so that you are as keen to follow their lives as well as the unfolding stories themselves.

Robicheaux is no unrealistic superhero - but human, flawed yet, rising above his limitations. JLB depicts Robicheaux's relationships with realism and the gamut of emotions we all experience to some degree or another.

His books are the very best fiction books for the discerning book work who loves this genre.

Dave Robicheaux novels:

The Neon Rain (1987)
Heaven’s Prisoners (1988)
Black Cherry Blues (1989)
A Morning for Flamingos (1990)
A Stained White Radiance (1992)
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993)
Dixie City Jam (1994)
Burning Angel (1995)
Cadillac Jukebox (1996)
Sunset Limited (1998)
Purple Cane Road (2000)
Jolie Blon’s Bounce (2002)
Last Car to Elysian Fields (2003)
Crusader’s Cross (2005)
Pegasus Descending (2006)
The Tin Roof Blowdown (2007)
Swan Peak (2008)

Read what I think about The Tin Roof BLOWDOWN on The Blog
You can add your own comments there too.

Billy Bob Holland series.

Cimarron Rose (1997)
Heartwood (1999)
Bitterroot (2001)
In the Moon of the Red Ponies (2004)

Others that would be worth reading.

Jesus Out to Sea (2007) – 11 short stories.

White Doves at Morning (2002) - historical novel -- an epic story of love, hate, and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

"The Lost Get-Back Boogie” (1986) – his first real success – but not a Robicheaux novel. Of it was written:

“Burke demonstrates a rare ability to write an extraordinarily propulsive tale that borders on genre fiction without ever being less than literature." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]