James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke. . , Fans of author James Lee Burke will easily recognize New Iberia as the settings for several of his famed Dave Robicheaux novels. Burke, who has been called the Faulkner of crime fiction, spent summers with his family in New Iberia. This area is clearly very dear to him, as his fictionalized version of New Iberia plays a prominent part in each of his stories. , The Main Street that Burke describes as the most beautiful in the country is just a part of the attraction of New Iberia, a city having "southern manners and at the same time is a first-name kind of place."If you read Dave Robicheaux's descriptions, you can get an even better picture of what downtown New Iberia is like., "I look down from the window at the brick paved street in the morning's blue light, the colonnades over the sidewalks, a black man pushing a wooden cart laden with strawberries from under the overhang of a dark green oak tree. The scene looks like a postcard mailed from the nineteenth century." - A Stained White Radiance, James Lee Burke, Burke is one of only two authors to have won Edgar Awards. His novel The Lost Get Back Boogiewas nominated for a pulitzer Prize, and In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead was filmed in New Iberia and the surrounding areas. Many locals were cast in the movie, which starred Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen and Ned Beatty.