The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (Hardcover)

by James Lee Burke (Author)
Key Phrases: street pukes, junkie priest, blood diamonds, The Tin Roof Blowdown, New Orleans, Ronald Bledsoe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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)
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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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416548483
• ISBN-13: 978-1416548485
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (148 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,879 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 16 in The Dave Robicheaux Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Elegy for New Orleans - Audiobook, July 20, 2007

By	Southern Deb "Southerndeb" (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This is the most horrifying description of post Katrina that I've read to date. Burke's lush descriptions of the beauty of New Orleans and Louisiana bayou country are gone, replaced by "bodies wrapped tight like mummies in the gray and brown detritus left by the receding waters." There were parts I had to close my eyes to listen to because the sense of place was so vivid and I couldn't stand what I was seeing. There were times I found tears rolling down my face without notice.

The story is vintage Burke with a little bit of "is it mystical magic or not" thrown in amongst the good vs. evil that is the cross on which Burke hangs his stories. Burke's politics is more evident here than in other books, with Bush bashing, gratuitous remarks about Fox News, etc., jarringly interrupting the story's magic. But yet, the depth of Burke's anger at what happened in New Orleans, the failures and abandoment, certainly is well-grounded, and he vents that anger for all to see.

You can read the publisher's summary to get a feel for the story, but even if Burke was writing about the recipe for a fish stew, I'd read it and it would be wonderful. There is not a writer alive today that can put you in the scene so completely - the smells, the sights, the scent of the breeze, the color of sunlight and shade, the fragility of a human soul and its wounds...he's just amazing.

This is a wonderful, achingly sad, and horrific story of how Burke mourns the City of New Orleans and what it once was. Dave and Clete have lost their anchor and their childhoods.

I'd give it 10 stars if possible.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real deal..., August 13, 2007

By	Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I think that James Lee Burke outdid himself with his latest Dave Robicheaux mystery, The Tin Roof Blowdown. Burke has often used the backdrop of New Orleans for his often dark and tortured books. But no fictional event could have provided as much material as Hurricane Katrina did in 2005.

Dave Robicheaux is a detective with the New Iberia Sheriff's Department, outside of New Orleans. When Katrina hits the Crescent City, all outside law enforcement agencies sent available officers to aid with the chaos that resulted. Robicheaux spent time in Viet Nam, but nothing he saw in war could have prepared him for what he witnessed in New Orleans. When he left Nam, he thought he would "never again have to witness the wide-scale suffering of innocent civilians, nor the betrayal and abandonment of our countrymen when they need us the most. But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm with greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana."

In The Tin Roof Blowdown, bounty hunter and Robicheaux friend, Cletus Purcel, is trying to pick up some bail skips right before Katrina hits. But the same men that Purcel is after end up being wanted for a host of other crimes as well. Not only that, but they've stolen a fortune from the top Mafioso in New Orleans. So not only are the cops looking for them, but some unsavory characters are as well. How these characters all converge is vintage Burke.

One of the things I like best about Burke's books is that he makes the locale a major player in his stories. He has a love/hate relationship with New Orleans and calls her the Whore of Babylon. When driving through the ruined streets, he muses "New Orleans had been a song, not a city. Like San Francisco, it didn't belong to a state; it belonged to a people." He describes southern Louisiana with lush brushstrokes, from the bayous to the wildlife to the marshes. But where he outdoes himself in The Tin Roof Blowdown is in his descriptions of post-Katrina New Orleans. No pictures that you may have seen will accurately tell the story of what happened to this historic city as well as Burke does in narrative form. It is that vivid and that horrible.

James Lee Burke tends to publish a new Robicheaux every July. Fortunately for us, while prolific in his writing, he isn't publishing books just to meet a deadline. The Tin Roof Blowdown is the real deal.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the wake of Katrina redemption is found..., July 17, 2007

By	Kate Willard "Realtor" (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Burke is the best around and he proves it again in the 16th Detective Robicheaux novel. He is able to capture the spirit of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast while telling a captivating story, and also illustrate much of what went wrong in our response to Hurricane Katrina--but he also shows what the human spirit can over come. Robicheaux's is investigating the shooting of one of two looters after they had looted the home of one of the city's most powerful mobsters. He Must find the surviving looter before the mobsters goons can get him. At the same time he is looking into the disappearance of a Ninth Ward priest who vanished while trying to save members of his congregation who were trapped by the hurricane flood waters. Burke is able to straddle the line between good and evil with each of his characters in such a way that the outcome is not foreseen and the gray areas are real. In the end though, the human spirit always shines through!