Tangled Web UK Review July 2008
Tin Roof Blow-Down by
James Lee Burke
pbk out July 08
(Orion)
at £7.99
Crime master, James Lee Burke, has delivered with great poignancy and vigour one of
the most powerful novels of the year, The Tin Roof Blowdown, his sixteenth – and best –
Dave Robicheaux novel to date.
The gruesome reality facing Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective, Dave Robicheaux, begins
as he is deployed to New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina leaves the commercial district and
residential neighbourhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. With the power
grid of the city destroyed, New Orleans is 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.
This is a demonstration of an author writing at the very peak of his capabilities. Tough,
engaging and totally engrossing, this is so much more than a crime "fiction" novel, as it
records the devastation wreaked by the costliest natural disaster to have ever struck the USA,
and the implications of governmental ineptitude, that has seen the inhabitants of a city being
left to fend for themselves.
James Lee Burke with The Tin Roof Blowdown, who has refused to pull his punches and
quite rightly so, has produced a novel of such touching realism, with such vivid descriptions
and such beautifully drawn characters, any reader who fails to appreciate what is happening in
its pages and puts this down before it is finished, deserves to dwell in the land Bad
Craftsmanship for evermore.
(
Chris High
Chris High - Author Multi-media Promotion Service www.chrishigh.com)
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