“I love it when a plan comes together.”

Paraphrased, that’s what James Lee Burke thinks of the screen adaptation of his novel “In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead.”

Shortened to “In the Electric Mist,” the movie is being filmed in and around New Iberia, hometown of the story’s hero, Detective Dave Robicheaux, and part-time home of the author.

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“This film is one of those kinds of situations where everything came together perfectly,” Burke said Monday morning from his Missoula, Mont., home. “It’s a wonderful cast, and the screen play is excellent.”

The film, scheduled for release in December, stars Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux. Other actors appearing in the movie include Kelly McDonald and Ned Beatty. A number of local and area residents have been cast as “extras,” some with speaking roles.

Published in 1993, the novel is set in the early 1990s. The film adaptation has a more contemporary feel.

“The movie is set in modern-day New Iberia,” Burke said. “The director and producer felt that we had to include Hurricane Katrina in the story line because nothing of that magnitude can be omitted today in any treatment of Louisiana.”

Though Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski are credited with the screenplay, Burke said he had a lot of input in the adaptation.

“I worked on it with Bertrand (Tavernier, director) and Michael (Fitzgerald, co-producer),” he said.

“It’s pretty much right on with the book. Nearly every line in the screenplay comes from the book, or right close to it. I’ve seen the script, and it’s a great screenplay.”

Burke said he is happy to see that the movie is being filmed in New Iberia, and he is especially glad to have Tavernier as the director.

“Bertrand is a wonderful director. He’s famous all over the globe,” Burke said. “Name any great director today and (Tavernier) has either worked with him or is a close friend. He’s extremely talented and very friendly. He’s a true gentleman.”

Born in Houston, Burke grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute — now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette — and later received a bachelor of arts degree in English and a master of arts degree from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960, respectively.

Over the years he worked as a landman for Sinclair Oil Co., pipeliners, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Services and instructor in the U.S. Job corps.

He and his wife Pearl met in graduate school and have been married for 46 years. They have four children: Jim Jr., an assistant U.S. Attorney; Andree, a school psychologist; Pamala, a television ad producer; and Alafair, a law professor and novelist who has had three of her own novels published.

Two of Burke’s works — “Black Cherry Blues,” another Robicheaux novel; and “Cimarron Rose,” one of the Billy Bob Holland series — have been awarded an Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year.

Two of his novels, “Heaven’s Prisoners” and “Two for Texas,” have been made into motion pictures.

“Heaven’s Prisoners” starred Alex Baldwin, Terri Hatcher, Kelly Lynch, Eric Roberts and Mary Stewart Masterson and was released in 1996. “Two for Texas,” — “a historical piece,” Burke said — starred Kris Kristofferson and Tom Skerrit and was produced by TNT.

In “Mist,” Robicheaux, an Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office detective, is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie (Baby Feet) Balboni — back in his home parish as co-producer of Hollywood director Michael Goldman’s Civil War film — when sizzled/psychic movie-star Elrod Sykes, pulled over for drunk driving, starts babbling about a corpse he found in the Atchafalaya Basin — the corpse of a black man Dave had seen murdered 35 years before.

Burke said he is working on a possible television series based on the Holland character.