If, like me, you enjoy detective novels, you likely appreciate the ongoing rewards of their serial nature. They can offer readers years of pleasure with characters and milieus that become familiar and reliable. I recently found myself savoring that benefit as I read installments by two of my favorites.
James Lee Burke is arguably one of the finest mystery authors writing today. His latest I read, “The Glass Rainbow,” published in 2010, is the best yet in Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, which began in 1987. It’s redolent with literary depth and eloquence, full-blooded storytelling and a strong sense of place – Louisiana’s Cajun country. Stephen King calls Burke “a gorgeous prose stylist,”
Robicheaux is a former New Orleans police officer who works as a sheriff’s deputy in the small city of New Iberia, just southeast of Lafayette. Like the best fictional detectives, he possesses a fervent personal moral code – most all great literature is moral storytelling, and it’s at the core of all great detective mysteries – but at the same time is unafraid to bend and even sometimes break the law as well as common social and cultural codes to achieve his goals.
He is also a haunted man: Grew up poor in the area where the books are set, lost his parents to death at a young age, served in Vietnam, also suffered the deaths of two wives. And is a recovering alcoholic, who struggles with temptation and dry drunk issues. Yet in the end, he’s a good, if very flawed man, who strives to promote justice in an unjust world and make sense of the contradictions inherent in the human condition. And a character one nonetheless can’t help but like and identify with, which is what keeps me coming back to Burke’s books time and again.
The other huge appeal of the series is how it is redolent with the atmosphere, flavors, scenery and history of its setting, a region I’ve visited a few times and the one place in America where regional culture not just survives but thrives. It helps the books feel like armchair vacations.
The other recent book in a detective series I read is a Matt Scudder mystery, “A Long Line of Dead Men,” by the highly prolific Lawrence Block. Scudder is much like Robicheaux: Ex-cop anguished by mortality, and an alcoholic who no longer drinks but struggles with sobriety.
He’s an unlicensed private detective of sorts, who lives in rented room in Manhattan on the upper edge of Hell’s Kitchen, the primary locale where the plots take place. In much the same way as Burke, Block’s skill at summoning the soul of a place gives his Scudder books a rich and scenic redolence. It’s one I know well as an ex-New Yorker, and sadly the sense, sights and souls found in the neighborhood have largely been erased by New York City’s gentrification. So for me a Scudder tale feels like a visit to the street life of somewhere beloved in my past.
The gift of both series is how their protagonists – one can call them heroes even with their flaws – become like old friends, as do the ongoing characters in and around their lives. This is a commonality shared by most every detective series. Both Burke and Block are skilled at writing serial volumes that can be entered at any point and don’t have to be read in succession.
Though they can take you away from your everyday reality, but it would be a mistake to think of them as escapism. At their best, both of these series ring true to life, albeit with sometimes disturbing aspects. And as one reads them and confronts the situations and antagonists within, ideally, you learn a bit more about yourself and others while enjoying stories well told.
Documentary Film: “Hitsville: The Making of Motown” – This Showtime doc might be a rather sanitized telling of the history of the Detroit record label that billed itself as “The Sound of Young America” in the 1960s. But there’s no denying its cultural impact or the everlasting appeal of its artists and their hit songs.
Movie: “A Most Wanted Man” – Author John leCarré’s spy thrillers have yielded many excellent movies, including this one set in Hamburg, Germany about a suspected Muslim terrorist, smartly and stylishly directed by rock music photographer Anton Corbijin and staring gifted actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman in his last major in his last major film role.
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2020
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us