Most often we read for entertainment, an escape from our lives, other times we read for enlightenment, wisdom and to add to our knowledge of this vast universe we consider ours. Sometimes we are gifted with all of these things by the efforts of one writer. Those are the books that transcend all genres, that transport the reader to a most singular place, the place in which we dwell long after the last page is read and the book set on the shelf.
James Lee Burke is probably the most gifted writer alive today. J. Franzen and co. may receive the accolades by the Mainstream Press and the "Oh so Arty" literary pundits and their magazines but in all honesty none of the "Enfant terribles" of the literary world today can hold a candle to J.L. Burke. Mr. Burke may be an older man, a man looking at the end of his journey, rather than taking those first steps, but his prose, his poetry and his way with words are always fresh, new and at the same time as old as the greatest of the Greek and Roman poets.
I am now reading FEAST DAY OF FOOLS, a Hackberry Holland tale as opposed to a Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel novel. It really makes no difference; one falls into the writing and the ambience and becomes immersed in a world so deftly wrought that everything else fades as a chimera and once again the reader is so totally enrapt in the novel that absolutely nothing else is of import.
