The Tin Roof Blowdown (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries) | 
| Author: James Lee Burke
Publisher: Pocket
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  133 reviews
Sales Rank: 3353
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1416548505
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416548508
ASIN: 1416548505
Publication Date: June 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: ex library nice reading copy
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 128 more reviews...
 "I wasn't sure New Orleans would survive." September 22, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
(4.5 stars) James Lee Burke, whose Dave Robicheaux series epitomizes some of the cultural characteristics of New Orleans and its outlying parishes, reaches his peak in this novel set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Robicheaux is a detective with the New Iberia Parish, outside of New Orleans, and he and his acquaintances, many of them well known to fans of Burke's novels, have been dramatically impacted by Katrina--those that are still alive, that is.
Artfully combining real stories and details of the Hurricane Katrina disaster with fictional, but seemingly accurate, details of several plot lines evolving from the anarchy of Katrina's wake, Burke creates a chilling and compelling novel which crosses boundaries and throws together people from all levels of New Orleans society--well-to-do suburbanites whose wealth may not all be from legitimate sources, hardworking people who have secrets, "rednecks" who feel entitled to their sometimes ill-gotten gains, and those who live on the fringes of society and feel lucky to be able to know where their next meal is coming from.
In this novel, several predators steal a small boat from a parish priest trying to hack through the roof of a church to save his parishioners, who are in the attic trying to escape the rising floodwaters. The priest, suffering from cancer and addicted to pain-killing drugs, is a long-time friend of Robicheaux and his alcoholic friend Clete Purcell, but the priest has vanished after his boat has been stolen. The boat, however, has been used later in a home invasion and robbery which has resulted in the shooting deaths of two of the perpetrators. The house, which belonged to a member of organized crime, was robbed of a stash of "blood diamonds," some cocaine, and a large amount of counterfeit money. Several neighbors, who may have witnessed the shootings, have seen "nothing." One of them is the father of a girl who was raped earlier by some of the perpetrators. Eventually, the criminals threaten Alafair, Robicheaux's adopted daughter, and Molly, Robicheaux's wife.
As the mystery and the relationships among the various characters become more complex, the violence and the body count increase. Some of the characters, including one of the "perps," elicit significant sympathy, even as justice--and payback--play out satisfactorily. Burke, as always, creates vibrant, carefully rendered descriptions, often devastatingly bleak, of the environment in which his characters must operate. In the process, he makes the personal aspects of Katrina's aftermath come alive. Well organized and well integrated with the real Katrina disaster, this novel may be Burke's most memorable creation. n Mary Whipple
Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead
A Morning for Flamingos
Heaven's Prisoners
Crusader's Cross: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Dave Robicheaux Mysteries)
 Just another vehicle for the media lies about Katrina and an insult to the people who lived it. September 9, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Burke may have a moving and descriptive writing style, but this is FICTION, folks! The thought that this book gives an accurate telling of post- Katrina New Orleans is an insult to it's people and the people of the Gulf Coast who lived through the experience. I got tired of crossing out inaccuracies about the storm and the typical CNN- type interpertations of events and found myself yelling at the text.
If you are looking for some kind of insight or glimpse into the hardships of life during and after Huricane Katrina do NOT bother with this book. The Katrina story needs to be told by people who were actually on the ground, and nobody else. Nearly 100% of the population living in a 25 by 180-mile stretch of Gulf coast was affected at a life-altering level by this catastrophic storm, so you have plenty of people to go to for information.
My own town, Slidell, took the Western eye-wall of the storm, significantly damaging over 80% of our homes. Everybody we knew was either driven from their own damaged home or housing somebody who was. That was the way we all lived well into 2006 and even beyond. Our home was one of the flooded ones. We lived with some very dear friends in the interim, but our family, as well as most others, was scattered all over during these times to live and work. The work was dangerous, filthy, hard and depressing, but there was nothing for it- you just had to roll up your sleeves and dig in. And except for those who may have lost loved ones, I don't know anyone who does not feel they are living a more meaningful life because of their experiences during those months which seemed to turn into these past few years.
Oh, and here is a surprise, from time zero we ALL had the full support of our Federal, State and local governments; FEMA (yes, FEMA); President Bush; Governor Blanco and our Mayors; the National Guard; the Red Cross; countless citizens from out of State and out of Country in the forms of utility companies, Church aid, shelters, hotels who took the burden of housing thousands (aided by FEMA monies), schools across the country who enrolled our students and made them welcome; WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL friends and family from all over the globe who gave help and comfort; and the list goes ever on. To you all, THANK YOU!
Our National News Media, however, couldn't seem to get the story straight. The mis-coverage of Katrina was more devastating to the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast than the storm itself. All the finger pointing that occurred in the news (which we only saw, read or heard about much later from family and friends-) was evil and is harmful to this day. In fact, the area may not fully recover in our lifetime because of all the lying and `politicking' that continues even now.
Think of it this way:
1. Try to evacuate Boston in 36 hours. You can't.
Mayor Nagan declared a mandatory evacuation and succeded in emptying our major metro area over 90% in only 36 hours. Of the few who stayed some felt they did not have the means to leave, others were just stubborn, some weren't paying much attention, some would not leave their pets, many stayed to do harm- (that is the only part of Burke's novel that rings true, that some stayed to do harm)- none expected to be trapped.
2. EVERYBODY who has lived in the New Orleans area for more than a year knows that the Superdome IS NOT AND NEVER WAS a Hurricane shelter. It is ONLY a place of LAST RESORT to ride out the storm- bring your own food, water and bedding for a couple of days. Nothing more. Again, NOBODY expected to be trapped. People actually drove their cars to the Superdome! Of course, these were flooded and all were trapped. The event was beyond human comprehension.
3. Day of the destruction, the President called our Governor to offer National Guard support. She said "not yet". The press reports how the Feds do not help- twisted lie. To give over your State to the Feds is a big decision- the Governor needed to assess the situation first. The trouble was that the catastrophe was so great people were either trapped or unable to get into areas to assess the situation- it all took time. And in that time lives were lost, there was nothing for it. That is why when you live in these areas they tell you over and over again- "If we declare a mandatory evacuation, WE CANNOT HELP YOU UNTIL THE CRISIS IS OVER." Everyone who lives there knows this fact, rich or poor.
4. And don't even bring up the levees and the Core of Engineers (who, by the way, was there to blue-roof all of our damaged homes). The levies failed because the storm was massive. If they were not as strong as they could have been, look to generations of locals who decided to divert Federal monies from levee improvements to other `more important' projects. Again- nobody ever believed a `Katrina' could actually happen.
The saddest truth of the matter is this-
The lies generated by the news media in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina did more damage to the people of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf coast parishes than the storm surge and winds combined. James Lee Burke's novel, "The Tin Roof Blowdown" is just another vehicle for those lies. I threw it in the trash.
By the way, it didn't start raining till Sunday afternoon, that would be August 28, 2005.
Same old formula September 4, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
 Katrina still waits its great novel September 4, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
May just be Burke's best book September 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
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