Book six

Okay…even Anglicans can be flexible. One of the friends who inspired this project suggested that I could change the rules about what counted towards my 60 and I’ve decided that since the spirit of the rules were to stop buying more books without reading the ones I had I would allow library books. Since I read Leon and Kellerman before this liturgical ruling they won’t count. But I just read the new James Lee Burke The New Iberia Blues and it does.

The Robicheaux books take place predominately in New Orleans and there is much discussion of the food, music, history, and culture of the place. Burke’s New Orleans also has a long history of racism, corruption, and exploitation. These are not light reads. Robicheaux has slowly aged through the series and now must be in his sixties. He’s a Vietnam vet along with his best friend Clete and both struggle with the long term affects of abusive childhoods and PTSD. He lives with his daughter, who he and his late wife adopted after her parents die fleeing El Salvador’s civil war. There is nothing really in the books about Trump and his wall but Burke’s sympathies for the marginalized and desperate run through the books.

These are catholic books – not just in the sense that New Orleans is a predominately Roman Catholic state and Robicheaux is a practicing catholic. I’ve read many mysteries where religious props are added but where they really aren’t integral to the story. Much more interesting are the writers who engage ideas, problems, themes, and symbols from a religious tradition as an integral part of the exploration of the murder mystery as mystery in a broader sense. If this interests you I recommend my teacher, Peter Erb’s book Murder, Manners, and Mystery which explores some very interesting intersections of murder mysteries and theological mysteries.

Burke’s books are catholic in the sense that the “whodonit” is only part of the story. Through the investigation we see Robicheaux wrestling with broader, bigger concerns of redemption, forgiveness, evil, and justice. There is also an incredible sense of the thinness between the living and the dead. Robicheaux sees and talks with the dead and their community and the community of the living are closely connected.