James Lee Burke's reputations both as a Southern writer and as a member of the hardboiled school have continued to grow with each successive work. His fiction incorporates some of most important themes and constructs from both traditions, and each new novel seems to explore in greater detail the genres in which he writes. In fact, Burke has been considered one of the most innovative contemporary hardboiled writers—in part, because he has interwoven the two genres so flawlessly into one body of work, without being limited by either set of conventions.

Burke has said that his themes are universal, and transcend any one particular region. Certainly, neither racism nor the problems of crime or of the apparent evil in human nature limit themselves to the South, and Burke's enormous popularity argues for some level of transcendence beyond the borders of the old Confederacy. Nonetheless...