James Lee Burke

He has won Edgar Awards for his novels Black Cherry Blues (1990), Cimarron Rose (1998), and Flags on the Bayou (2024).

The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwin (Heaven's Prisoners) and then Tommy Lee Jones (In the Electric Mist).

At various times, he worked as a truck driver for the U.S. Forest Service, as a newspaper reporter, as a social worker on Skid Row, Los Angeles, as a land surveyor in Colorado, in the Louisiana State unemployment system, and in the Job Corps in the Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky.

[5][6] Burke and his wife Pearl, née Pai Chu,[7] owned homes in Lolo, Montana and in New Iberia, Louisiana.

[11] Extended family include cousins novelist Elizabeth Nell Dubus and author and actress DeLauné Michel.