The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries)

This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers as he is deployed to New Orleans. As James Lee Burke's new novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, begins, Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. In the midst of an apocalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city.

In a singular style that defies genre, James Lee Burke has created a hauntingly bleak picture of life in New Orleans after Katrina. Filled with complex characters and depictions of people at both their best and worst, The Tin Roof Blowdown is not only an action-packed crime thriller, but a poignant story of courage and sacrifice that critics are already calling Burke's best work.
 

Customer Reviews:

Same old formula

Burke uses more metaphors than the poet laureate of the US. Frankly, it's just tiresome. After I wasted several hours reading the last Burke novel ( I had read a couple before and sort of liked them, but was afraid of them becoming the same story rehashed), I swore never to read another one, but the critics' waxing poetic over his Katrina novel broke down my resistance. What a mistake. Same old story -- Dave is plagued by demons, befriends a reformed mobster, and has to deal with an arch villain that threatens his family. Pu - leeze! If Burke were to win the Nobel prize, I'd never pick up another one of his books.

2008-09-04

Katrina still waits its great novel

Read this book on the basis of the reviews and straight after George Pelecanos' excellent The Night Gardner but I was most disappointed. It is a series and makes few if any concessions to a newbie so characters many of which dont ring true, are thrown in at random without any sort of introduction.

The plot was fanciful with a blood diamond /Al Queda link which was most implausable and there seemed a lot of pointless too-ing fro-ing without advancing the plot. All this is interspersed with excellent, vivid descriptions of the area and the Katrina bits were good with real rage. I felt there was a really good story based around Katrina trying to get out but it was crammed into a fairly pointless and routine crime thriller. It would have been better to start with some new characters and work from there. Katrina is still waiting its great novel.

2008-09-04

May just be Burke's best book

I've read all the Dave Robicheaux books that James Lee Burke has written and this may be the best of the bunch. This time, Robicheaux and his buddy (Clete Purcel) are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Hurricane Rita and some crimes that have been committed in the chaos of the aftermath of the hurricanes.

With any Dave Robicheaux book, the plot is detailed and there is a great deal of character development throughout the book. Burke makes the culture, the people, the geography and the region of south Louisiana come alive with a style of writing that I don't find too often.

In this book, Robicheaux has to deal with people who have taken the law into their own hands while looters may have run wild in a mobsters' home after the flood. Who has the money? Who shot people that may or may not have been innocent? I don't like to give details away when I give a review but know that the plot is detailed, but Burke will keep you interested until the very end.

Curl up with this book. You won't be disappointed.

2008-09-02

Gotta love Dave!

When Katrina hit, I knew I wanted Dave's view on what was happening. He always cuts through the bs to give the story the way it happens to real people. Good weaving of actual events with the mystery (as always)!

2008-09-01

Hurricane Katrina

One of the most haunting accounts of the effects of hurricane Katrina and the geopolitical contributions to the devastation of the storm as well as the aftermath.

Fantastic interweaving of various characters, none of them exactly what they seem

2008-08-29