Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke talks to us about his latest Robicheaux thriller 'Clete' and tells us where the idea of writing the Dave Robicheaux series first came to him.
James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, three-time winner of the Edgar Award as well as the Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America, winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger and Gold Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. His books include Another Kind of Eden, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, and The New Iberia Blues. His latest book Clete is published in the UK by Orion on 13 June. You can also find his books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
During the war years I loved the Book Mobile. All kids did. Those years in many ways were our best, just like the Brits.
As a little boy I wanted to be a painter. In the fifth grade I wanted to become a writer. I've never changed my mind. The rejections taught me one lesson: Don't quit. Never, not for any reason. Let the world break its fists on your face and swallow your blood, but don't give up. There's a reason for your talent.
Research is research. But art is an obsession. It never lets you go. The artist hears dozens of voices in his head all the time. But don't tell a psychiatrist that. He'll have you in a canvas jacket.
I wrote a long novella about a young ex-marine who worked in a filling station in New Iberia who was like Dave and in love with a Cajun girl named Bootsey Mouton on Spanish Lake. It was rejected everywhere and is still unpublished. I don't even know where it is. I bought a yellow legal pad and started writing in an Italian café down the street from Ferlingetti's bookstore across the street from a Catholic church and got two chapters together and sent them to my old compadre Charles Willeford. He wrote me back and said I may have just created one of the greatest protagonists in American crime fiction. Charles was not only a good writer but a very good editor.
I'm very happy you brought up Wayfaring Stranger. I believe it's my most neglected book. It's based of my cousin Weldon Benbow Malette, who was good and kind and brave and just one of the best guys on earth, a college boy who enlisted in '42 and walked through hell and liberated one of Hitler's extermination camps, and left a lung in Germany and came home with a German girl and the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts. Good God in Heaven, if this is not a great book, then there are no great books. I don't care what anybody says. I'd like to get that on the Goodyear Blimp.
Yes, the Clete book will be out in June. I think it's a fine book, but I may have a bias. Anyway, it's Clete, and I mean solid Clete. I think he's one of the best characters I've written about. I didn't say "created" either. I believe my characters are real; they may live inside you, but they go their own way. I've yet to see the exception. I have to say Clete is original, though. He's the blue-collar knight errant, just as Dave is. They never use God's name in vain; they respect women, they protect the elderly and the poor and seek justice for those have no power or voice. I'm really proud of these two guys. I hope they stomp butt and set the standard forever.
I have a book coming out titled Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie and narrated by a little girl based loosely on my mother in a world where hardship and poverty were endless. It also has to do with Benjamin Segel and the oil business and what is called dusters and gusters. This baby really rocks.
Knowing when my family is okay. That's the big one. The only one, really.
They probably know more about me than I do. Why? Because I cannot think of anything interesting about me. In fact, I sometimes get invited as a guest speaker at meetings of the Insomnia Sufferers of America. Who needs sleep-aides when guys like me are around.
