Hats off to the master

Review: John O’Mahony

JAMES L BURKE doesn’t like being pigeon-holed. Rightly recognised as one of the greatest crime writers of his generation, Burke is uneasy with the tag.

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the accolades. It’s not that he’s not proud of a genre that he feels was not taken seriously for far too long. It’s just that he feels the tag doesn’t fit.

It’s too narrow. It’s too confined. It basically misses what Burke and good crime fiction is all about.

In the toss-up between heads – the commercial success and global appeal of his books – and tails – the knock-on effects of their underlying message – Burke would choose tails seven days a week.

Every since he started writing, he has been more concerned about changing the world than entertaining it.

Collecting the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America earlier this year, Burke said more writers were realising the power of the crime novel and its ability to tap into the current angst.

He firmly believes today’s crime novels have replaced the sociological novels of the 1930s and ’40s – “offering a glimpse of the world we inhabit, not through its heroes but through its anti-heroes”.

He sees himself as a conduit for change, the long hours he spends writing more a calling, a vocation – than work.

“I have never measured the value of what I do in terms of its commercial success. I also believe that whatever degree of creative talent I possess was not earned but was given to me by a power outside myself, for a specific purpose, one that has little to do with my own life ...

“The material for the stories is everywhere. The whole human family becomes your cast of characters. You can give voice to those who have none and expose those who would turn the earth into a sludge pit. As an artist you have automatic membership in a group that is loathed, feared and denigrated by every dictator and demagogue in the world,” he said in a recent interview.

That sense of morality is evident throughout his books, which are littered with a range of colourful characters drawn from Burke’s own colourful life.

His latest book, Rain Gods, featuring ageing Texan sheriff Hackberry Holland (who, like Burke, is in his 70s) is a classic example of how the author views the world – when the chips are down, even up against seemingly insurmountable evil, the most ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

In this case, the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a church, pits Holland up against a bible-quoting serial killer – putting his life in danger and forcing him to confront the demons of his own past.

The battle between black and white, good an evil is common throughout Burke’s books – most notably in the brilliant Dave Robicheaux series.

Part detective, part crusader, part screw-up, Robicheaux “fights for underdogs and people ignored by the larger portion of society – folks whose lives are made expendable by men with wealth, power or privilege.”

From the death of a black prostitute in Neon Rain, the dumping of industrial waste on the property of a poor woman and links to the Mafia in the Last Car to Elysian Fields to the collision course with the neo-Nazi psychopath Walter Buchalter, in Dixie City Jam, Robicheaux is one of the greatest heroes to ever grace the page.

Like Burke himself, Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic who sees the world in simple terms – right and wrong – and his strong moral compass steers him down many dark and dangerous roads as he tries to provide justice for the disenfranchised and to mete out his own brand of justice with the help of his ex-partner, Clete Purcell.

Surprisingly, crime fiction didn’t feature among Burke’s early attempts to make it as a writer.

It was only after a recommendation from a friend that he was to venture down a literary path that was to change his life.

“I had an unusual experience up here in Montana in 1984. I came up with my wife and one of our daughters, Alafair, and I was fishing with Rick DeMarinis, the novelist, and these were his exact words, ‘Jim, you’ve written everything else. Why don’t you try a crime novel? You only have to write two good chapters and you can get an advance.’

“I’d never thought of that, because I thought I’d always written about crime anyway. And I had written Half of Paradise about a young prize fighter, and he was the young Dave Robicheaux. So we went from here to San Francisco and I started writing The Neon Rain and I wrote two chapters featuring Dave Robicheaux as the hero and sent them to Charles Willeford (a hugely influential cult crime writer) who had been my friend for many years and Charles said, ‘You have got a terrific character. This could be a great book and a great series ...

“Then Neon Rain came out in 1985 and it got great reviews. Then Heaven’s Prisoners (1988, and subsequently adapted for cinema with Alec Baldwin playing Robicheaux) and Black Cherry Blues (1989) did even better and that was it. I’d made it.”

Burke was born in Houston, Texas, in 1936 and grew up on the Texas-Louisiana gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute. He worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the US Job Corps.

He met his wife Pearl in graduate school and they have been married 48 years. They have four children: Jim Jr., an assistant US Attorney; Andree, a school psychologist; Pamala, a TV ad producer; and Alafair, a law professor and novelist.

Burke spends his time between Missoula, Montana and New Iberia, Louisiana. It was his love of the deep south and the devastation dished out by Hurricane Katrina that spawned his greatest work – The Tin Roof Blows Down – recognised by many as a masterpiece.

Writing in this newspaper, he spoke of the tragedy of the loss of a national treasure. He was also scathing in his criticism of the Bush administration for abandoning the city before and after the floods.

“New Orleans is a tragedy, and not simply because of a hurricane. In the early 1980s, crack cocaine hit the city like a hydrogen bomb. Simultaneously, the Reagan administration cut federal aid to New Orleans by half. The consequence was disaster. The murder rate soared, matching Washington’s. White flight into Jefferson Parish was on a level with the Exodus from Egypt. New Orleans cops not only committed robberies and investigated their own crimes, they actually committed murders – in one instance the execution by a female officer of the witnesses to her crime.

“Two days after the city was flooded, US President George W Bush stated, on television: ‘I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.’ The disingenuousness of the statement, or its disconnection from reality, is, to my mind, beyond comprehension.

Burke’s focus has now turned to Montana and the stripping of the forest by avaricious loggers. “Montana is the most beautiful place on the planet. You come here and it’s very hard to leave. But it’s being ruined piece by piece, whether it’s stripping forests or extractive industries poisoning rivers and lakes ... What’s being played out in Montana is the American story. Big corporations against the working man and the environment. The contest is ultimately who will control our natural resources.”

Burke lists George Orwell as among his influences. As long as there’s a battle to be fought, he will continue the work his hero started – to set right the injustices caused by what he called the “bloody hand of the empire at work”.