James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936) is an American author, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won Edgar Awards for his novels Black Cherry Blues (1990), Cimarron Rose (1998), and Flags on the Bayou (2024).[1] He has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin (Heaven's Prisoners) and then Tommy Lee Jones (In the Electric Mist). His 1986 novel The Lost Get-back Boogie was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Wirt Williams, reviewing Burke's first novel, Half of Paradise (1965), in the New York Times, compared his writing to Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway, but concluded "Mr. Burkes' literary forebear is Thomas Hardy."[2]
Burke's 1982 novel, Two for Texas, was made into a 1998 TV movie of the same name. Burke has also written five miscellaneous crime novels (including Two for Texas), two short-story collections, four books starring protagonist Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland, four books starring Billy Bob's cousin Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, and two books starring Weldon Avery Holland, grandson of legendary Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.
He worked in a variety of jobs over the years, while books he had written were rejected, and books he had published went out of print. At various times, he worked as a truck driver for the U.S. Forest Service, as a newspaper reporter, as a social worker on Skid Row, Los Angeles, as a land surveyor in Colorado, in the Louisiana State unemployment system, and in the Job Corps in the Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky.[4][3]
He taught at the University of Missouri as a grad student, then at the University of Louisiana, the University of Montana, and Miami-Dade Community College, before settling in Wichita, Kansas to teach at Wichita State University in 1978.[5][6]
1988: Burke was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction.[14] Burke received the 2002 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the "literary intellectual heritage of Louisiana." The award was presented by the then-Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, on November 2, 2002, at a ceremony held at the inaugural Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge.
2009: Burke received the MWA's Grand Master Award.[15] A mystery novelist rarely wins both an Edgar award and a Guggenheim fellowship.
In 2024 he was named winner of the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's Diamond Dagger award for his outstanding lifetime's contribution to the crime and mystery fiction genre.[16]
A statue of Burke was erected in downtown New Iberia, Louisiana in April of 2024.[17]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
