Southern Mystery Novelist Pt2.

Mr. Burke, a native and life-long resident of Louisiana, is an amazing writer. With his Dave Robicheaux series, set in New Orleans and the world of rural Louisiana parishes, he’s a master of southern hard-boiled detective writing. His hero is an honorable man in a corrupt world, his writing is strong yet poetically evocative of a place he loves, his plots are often quite violent, but Dave and the people he cares about usually win through, despite serious damage to limbs and/or psyches. Burke has been called “the Faulkner of crime fiction.” Haunted by his own history and the history of his beloved New Iberia Parish, hero Dave Robicheaux is a recovering alchoholic (like the author himself). He is driven by a fierce moral code and is redeemed by his love for his family and friends. This is fine writing about good and evil, about a unique and fragile and beautiful place, and about the people who live in its swamps and bayous and try to survive against heavy odds.

A more recent series, the Billy Bob Holland series, is set in Texas and is based on Burke family history. Burke’s great grandfather was a trail drover and Cimarron Rose is based on his journals. Other novels by James Lee Burke are outside the crime-writing genre and well worth a read. All are in print and The Lost Get Back Boogie was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Asked in a recent interview who he’d most like to meet, he responded that when he got to Heaven he’d ask to meet Robert E. Lee, as “emblematic of all that’s fine and gentle and brave in human beings. Men and women, those are the qualities that redeem us: kindness, humility and courage.”

A well-known columnist for The Miami Herald, Hiassen’s reporting on local government corruption and environmental depredations in his beloved native Florida have made him a national reputation. His biting satire naturally lends itself to his popular crime novels, all set in the South Florida he knows and loves so well. Continuing characters drop in and out of these books, the best being Skink, renegade ex-governor and environmental terrorist. The stories are not classic “whodunits”–as in Elmore Leonard, the fun is in following the tricksters and conmen to see if they get away with it. Good guys and bad guys are great fun to read about. The plots are outrageous and laugh-out-loud funny.

Carl’s writing philosophy applies to both his newspaper columns and his fiction: “Ridicule is the only way to treat those kinds of crooks that somehow end up in public office.” Tony Hillerman calls him “the Mark Twain of the crime novel.” In speaking of his published collections of newspaper columns, Carl says, “readers who thought I dreamed up the crazy ideas for my novels will now realize that I simply ripped them out of the headlines in The Herald. Nothing that happens in my books, no matter how twisted, transcends the reality of South Florida.“

Recently, he also wrote his first book for teens, centering on his trademark themes of corruption and destructive development. Hoot is funny and ultimately hopeful—the good guys win one.