Western American Literature

Leonard Engel, a professor of English at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, presents us with a fine collection of essays from eleven different scholars and critics commenting on many facets of James Lee Burke's novels. He has also provided an informative, useful introduction sketching out Burke's career—its three phases—as well as a fascinating interview with Burke.

James Lee Burke is a genuine phenomenon: a writer who attracts a vast popular audience as well as the attention of literary folk. In fact, it's my impression that hordes of Burke's fans are passionately devoted, while at the same time, as is often the case, they may not read very critically—critical being interpreted as disloyal and negative. I've even read reviews that actually gush, intemperately blessing Burke for writing another wonderful book.

A primary issue alluded to in most of these essays is the apparent conflict between commercial success and literary quality, usually expressed [End Page 424] as the limitations of the hard-boiled detective genre, which, however, nearly every essayist either directly or by implication asserts that Burke has transcended. In fact, one of the most contentious but also interesting of these essays, by Linda J. Holland-Toll, hammers away at this theme. She claims that by his frequent, nearly habitual use of ghosts, spirits, religion, the supernatural in general, Burke violates the rationalist code of the hard-boiled detective. Holland-Toll is concerned that readers are likely to feel alarmed, if not betrayed, when a detective like Burke's series hero, Dave Robicheaux, actually talks to ghosts and is sometimes given information and guidance by these spooks. Still, Holland-Toll concedes that one can still enjoy Burke's works as detective fiction, instancing a friend, a Baptist minister's wife and one of the legion of Burke readers who has evidently totally missed the supernatural and religious elements in, for instance, Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002).

Sam Coale muses on Burke's Robicheaux series, which he likens to the work of Anthony Burgess for its plethora of characters, especially the demonic and saintly, the crooks and the wounded—the damaged. One might have cited Dickens, or Balzac, but no matter. This teeming excess of creative vigor threatens to overwhelm conventional narrative, Coale fears, especially the "mystery formula." But he does offer a fascinating alternate concept: entanglement, a complex notion borrowed from quantum theory which, if one applies it to Burke's stories, he suggests, "undermines the basic polarities of the mystery formula" (130).

Formulas are invented by critics; writers pay little attention to them. James Lee Burke creates characters, lots of them, about whom he spins tales. If a character violates the principles of the detective formula, it's because such limitations don't fit the story. Burke is not likely to let that happen. Nor, I strongly suspect, do the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers who love these stories care a whit.

Beyond that, however, it's deeply gratifying for those of us who read more intently that there is substance underlying these appealing stories. There are themes that resonate through literary history. Burke is conscious of giant, burning, eternal issues and has something worthwhile to say on the subject. For that we must be grateful, and a collection like this deserves a share of our gratitude for its cogent commentary. [End Page 425]