James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936) is an American author most famous 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). He has also received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been acted in movies twice, first by Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners and later by Tommy Lee Jones in In the Electric Mist. His 1986 novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Wirt Williams, who reviewed Burke's first novel, Half of Paradise (1965), in the New York Times, compared his writing to authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway. He concluded that Burke's literary influence is most similar to Thomas Hardy.
Burke's 1982 novel, Two for Texas, was adapted into a 1998 TV movie with the same name. He has also written five other crime novels (including Two for Texas), two short-story collections, four books featuring Texas attorney Billy Bob Holland, four books about Billy Bob's cousin, Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland, and two books about Weldon Avery Holland, the grandson of the famous Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.
Biography
Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up along the Gulf Coast where Texas and Louisiana meet. He studied at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Missouri.
Over the years, he worked in many different jobs. Some of his books were not accepted by publishers, and others became unavailable to readers. At different times, he worked as a truck driver for the U.S. Forest Service, as a newspaper reporter, as a social worker in 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.
He taught at the University of Missouri while he was a graduate student. Later, he taught at the University of Louisiana, the University of Montana, and Miami-Dade Community College. In 1978, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, to teach at Wichita State University.
Personal life
Burke and his wife, Pearl, originally named Pai Chu, owned homes in Lolo, Montana, and in New Iberia, Louisiana. They have four children, including Alafair Burke, a law professor and best-selling crime writer. Their daughter Pamala Burke McDavid passed away in 2020. Other family members include cousins Elizabeth Nell Dubus, a novelist, and DeLauné Michel, a writer and actress.