Product Description

In the waning days of summer, 2005, a storm with greater impact than the bomb that struck Hiroshima peels the face off southern Louisiana.

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27286 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-17
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In Burke's meticulously textured 16th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2006's Pegasus Descending), Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for an account of sin and redemption in New Orleans. When Detective Robicheaux's department is assigned to investigate the shooting of two looters in a wealthy neighborhood, he learns that they had ransacked the home of New Orleans's most powerful mobster. Now he must locate the surviving looter before others do, and in the process he learns the fate of a priest who disappeared in the ill-fated Ninth Ward trying to rescue his trapped parishioners. Burke creates dense, rich prose that draws the reader into a web of greed and violence. Each of his characters feels the hands of both grace and of perdition, and the final outcome of their struggle is never quite certain. Burke showcases all that was both right and wrong in our response to this national disaster, proving along the way that nobody captures the spirit of Gulf Coast Louisiana better. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Ever since Hurricane Katrina ravaged southern Louisiana in August 2005, James Lee Burke's fans have been waiting for this book, and Burke does not disappoint. Outraged and eloquent, the two-time Edgar Award-winner delivers a gut-wrenching portrayal of the storm's ferocity and devastating aftermath, venting through Robicheaux his frustration at the human incompetence and greed that magnified nature's destructive fury. His evocative, heartfelt prose, sympathetic characters, and intricately interwoven plotlines grip the reader from the first page. Burke's admirers will savor this latest installment, while those not yet acquainted with Robicheaux can start here, thanks to the comprehensive background information Burke provides in what critics call his best book yet.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From AudioFile
TIN ROOF is a stunning elegy to New Orleans and the physical and cultural losses suffered by all of south Louisiana from the devastations of Katrina. Burkes novels read by Will Patton, as nearly a dozen have been, are perfect partnerships. Patton exquisitely captures the visceral and vivid prose style. He makes the crooks and psychopaths menacing and utterly frightening, and the descriptions of the bayou and the pecan trees lyrical and dazzling. Its part accent, part pace and inflection, but also a sure grasp of the razor-edged slang from characters like bail-skip locator Clete Purcell. This well-crafted abridgment focuses on Dave Robicheauxs assignment in New Orleans to investigate the murder of a looter, whose death is inevitably tangled with other remarkable characters. Listeners can wholly enjoy the short form or delight in seeking out the full version of this Burke-Patton success. R.F.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Interesting mystery taking place during the most distressing disaster of this country's history.
I enjoyed this book and the insight I obtained from the details re the hurricane. The suspense was just an added bonus. Very well written.

One Word - Beautiful
Not the distruction that called herself Katrina, but this authors' writing.
I am a new James Lee Burke reader with this being my first read (actually audio) and in awe of this man's vivid and rich writing prose.
There were times when I rewound the tape to re-listen to the way he discribes a simple way someone looks and walks down a New Orleans street.

Anyway, the stories are the reason to keep on reading and he delivers big with {sad, funny, beautiful, tense, brutal, ugly, smelly, clever, tough and weak characters and plots}

If you really want to experience his books the way they should be experienced, get the audible (audio) versions..the narrater delivers the book like "listening" to a movie.

Great, until the end...
This is a great read. The descriptive way in which Burke writes is without compare. The mixed in facts of the horror of Katrina puts you in the scene because you'll remember the images on the news and see them intermingled with the story. The only issue that I have with the book is the ending. There just isn't much of a payoff and you find yourself near the end of the book thinking, can he finish it in that many pages? Well he does manage to finish it, but in a way that seems rushed and unsatisfying.

The book was good enough to get me to read another Robicheaux novel but if that one has the same kind of sitcom, quick stitch ending I doubt I'll read a third. Overall a good read, but hardly filling.