This is a shameless plug for an author who isn’t too popular in India, a man who I have never interacted with, and who will never know of or read this column. So no ulterior motives here; I just want to share a secret of mine. James Lee Burke. He writes detective novels that can bring a tear to your eye.

He writes whodunits, but has been called “America’s best novelist”. A writer in The Observer was moved to write: “That James Lee Burke has been consigned to the literary ghetto called ‘crime fiction’ is itself an offence . . . Burke is an exceptional writer, no qualification necessary.” The Washington Post believes that “Burke can touch you in ways few writers can”. And a critic in The Times mused: “At times Burke’s writing and atmosphere remind one of William Faulkner, at other moments Raymond Carver. I cannot think of much higher praise that can be accorded a novel.” OK, so now, hopefully, I have proved that I am not a freak or a huckster.

Like Faulkner, Burke is essentially a chronicler of the American South: a society scarred indelibly by racism, plagued by economic disparity, where the wealth of elite white families hides horrific ancient injustices that went casually unpunished. The novels usually begin with a murder and it is left to policeman Dave Robicheaux (who features in most of Burke’s books) to piece together the jigsaw where the last piece is almost always an obscene truth that has been carefully hidden for decades. It’s Greek tragedy masquerading as detective fiction and beginning with the last act.

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