Writing: James Lee Burke

It's unusual to come across really good writing in genre fiction, at least in my experience.  Yes, I have heard tell of stellar science fiction writers but I don't read SciFi so can't speak to them.  And there are some really good story tellers and creators of characters in detective fiction (like Lee Child and Robert Crais) but that's different from a Wallace Stegner-class writer, one who writes viscerally and visually.  James Lee Burke is one such writer.

He has a string of novels featuring the character Dave Robicheaux, a detective for a Louisiana Parish near New Orleans.  Dave is likable but not a happy man unless he is at home with his small family.  He stretches the letter of the law to fit the size of the page in front of him and at the same time is kind and has an almost painful standard of  integrity.  In his novels, there is always crime, a murder, unsavory characters. But what sets these novels apart is the description of place and what that place does to people.

I just finished "The Tin Roof Blowdown" written two years after Hurricane Katrina.  Burke's descriptions of the hurricane and its aftermath are gut wrenching in their stark brutality.  Burke does a good job at making you understand the terror and the helplessness in face of it all. "The tide seems to shrink from the land as though a giant drainhole has formed in the center of the Gulf. To the south, a long black hump begins to gather itself on the earth's rim, swelling out of the water like an enormous whale, extending itself all across the horizon.  You cannot believe what you are watching. The black hump is now rising toward the coastline, gaining momentum and size, increasing in velocity so rapidly that its own crest is absorbed by the wave before it can crash to the surface in front of it.  It's called a tidal surge."

This book is full of philosophy. "...you probably already know that human beings are infinitely complex and not subject to easy categorizations. I'm always amazed at how the greatest complexity as well as personal courage is usually found in our most nondescript members.  People who look as interesting as a mud wall have the personal histories of classical Greeks.  I sometimes think that every person's experience, if translated into flame, would be enough to melt the flesh from his bones. I guess the word I'm looking for is "empathy."

And beauty: "I could smell the bourbon as it rolled back over his tongue. I envisioned its amber color inside the yellow staves of the curing barrel, the bead it made inside the bottle's neck when it was air-locked under the cork, the splash it made when it was released again and poured over ice and mint leaves inside a glass.  Unconsciously I swallowed and touched at my brow as though a vein were tightening in my head."

I could go on and on. If you haven't read James Lee Burke, give him a try.  You don't have to be a fan of detective fiction, just consider his books to be really good summer reading.  I promise that there will be paragraphs that will make you look away from the page, make you see clearly what he has described, make you read it again and make you shake your head in amazement at his talent. 

 

Plus, he sort of looks like Tommy Lee Jones.  That is never a bad thing.

 

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