The Tin Roof Blowdown

Dave Robicheaux #16

by James Lee Burke

This is James Lee Burke's latest mystery featuring Dave Robicheaux. It is also much more than that. The story begins with the shooting of two would-be looters in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and then follows a motley group of characters - from street thugs to a big-time mob boss, from a junkie priest to a sadistic psychopath - as their stories converge on a cache of stolen diamonds, while the storm turns the Big Easy into a lawless wasteland of apocalyptic proportions. The nightmarish landscape created by Katrina seems the perfect setting for Burke's almost Biblical visions of good and evil - it is as if he had to wait for this disaster to find the occasion to match his emotionally supercharged prose. You can feel the undercurrents of rage and pain beneath the narrative, making this not only his most personal and deeply felt book for some time, but quite possibly his best novel to date. This is not just a superb crime novel, it is potentially THE fictional chronicle of a disaster whose human dimensions America is still struggling to process.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Detective

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

James Lee Burke is an American author best known for his mysteries, particularly the Dave Robicheaux series. He has twice received the Edgar Award for Best Novel, for Black Cherry Blues in 1990 and Cimarron Rose in 1998.

Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked at a wide variety of jobs over the years, including working in the oil industry, as a reporter, and as a social worker. He was Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, succeeding his good friend and posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner John Kennedy Toole, and preceding Ernest Gaines in the position. Shortly before his move to Montana, he taught for several years in the Creative Writing program at Wichita State University in the 1980s.

Burke and his wife, Pearl, split their time between Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. Their daughter, Alafair Burke, is also a mystery novelist.

The book that has influenced his life the most is the 1929 family tragedy "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner.

Reviews

[Tea Jovanović · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nije loš autor, i ne piše loše, ali smatram da nije za naše tržište, tj. da je mala ciljna grupa za njega na ovim prostorima... Možda je previše "američki"... Ne znam ni sama... Ali da me je Algoritam konsultovao na vreme ovaj autor ne bi bio objavljen na srpski... dovoljno je hrvatsko izdanje...

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading all of the books in the Dave Robicheaux series since the beginning of the year. I have enjoyed them all. James Lee Burke's prose is rich and lyrical. His characters are vivid and come alive and you become immersed in the story. Even if you have never been to New Orleans or Southern Louisiana you will come to know it, to taste the foods, hear the music, see the sunrise on the bayou, or listen to the the rain on a tin roof. I knew that this story dealt with Hurricane Katrina and it's impact when I first started reading the series. After having read the first few books in the series I felt that only James Lee Burke could deliver a story centered around Katrina that was both evocative and heartfelt ( "bodies wrapped tight like mummies in the gray and brown detritus left by the receding waters.") He does not disappoint. You can feel the rage and pain.

A junkie priest in a last heroic act tries to save parishioners trapped in the attic of a church. A group of looters hit a big score before two of them are shot. Was it self defense? Or murder? One of the victims of the looters is a mob boss. There are missing "blood diamonds" and a sadistic psychopath. The hunt for the diamonds and other looter is on. All while the storm turns the Big Easy into a lawless wasteland of apocalyptic proportions. It is a story of good and evil that is almost Biblical.

The impact of Hurricane Katrina is still being felt and cannot be forgotten. Thanks to this story we are also provided with a fictional account of the people who struggled to survive in it's aftermath.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ❓❓❓❓
My rating is questionable—my bad.
I started this on audio when I had already used up some of my 15 free monthly Spotify audiobook listening hours. That means when I fell asleep at night or my mind wandered, I could not rewind to catch what I missed. By itself this book is 13 hours long so how to be fair about it?
I do give 5★ to Will Patton's stellar narration. I wasn't even able to catch the ending because my time was up, but seriously, it mattered not. Will's voice is such a pleasure, he could read the dictionary and I'd love it. And besides, there are many Robichauex novels after this one and we know who makes it out in the end. It's about the journey getting there.

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Burkes mystery takes place at the same time as Katrina and he does describe horrible events that went on there in the context of his book so we see people fighting over scarce resources and bodies floating in the waters and rescuers saving people etc and I have no real beef with his limited description of the catastrophe as it is part of the setting of the book, but its his mystery that I find faulty. I really think the book is overlong and the plot convoluted, unconvincing and generally full of unsympathetic people.

Basically three looters who are past rapists and a brother of one loot the home of a crook find diamonds but in the course of their leaving get shot by someone from a neighboring house. The innocent boy is killed and one of the rapists is paralyzed. The robbed crook tries to find the looters while a diabolical psyopath seeks to recover the diamonds. Robicheaux investigates the shooting of the innocent boy and gets ensnared in the search by the crooks and the psychopath to find the diamonds and the looters. Naturally the psycho goes after Robicheaux's daughter. The story takes way too long to get anywhere and (part of that is because Burke is trying to show that justice and all services grounded to a halt when New Orleans was destroyed but there are too many loose ends and the denouement takes too long to get there.

Burke's description of the destruction of New Orleans is convincing, but he needed a better plot.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never been disappointed by a James Lee Burke novel, and this, most recent in the Dave Robicheaux series, is no exception. Robiicheaux is a wonderfully complex character, genuinely and consistently conflicted between his visceral urges and more socially acceptable behaviors.

Robicheaux, a Sheriff of New Iberia, Louisiana, has a strong and deep sense of justice, and repeatedly champions the downtrodden, abused and abandoned, while meting out his own version of just desserts to the mean-spirited and predatory. His natural inclination is to meet violence with violence outside the law, and he continually struggles to balance his true nature with his professional obligations.

Tin Roof Blowdown takes place in post-Katrina New Orleans, and Burke's descriptions of the devastation of both the inhabitants and the city are graphic and disturbing.

Burke's prose is spare, yet from his minimalist descriptive phrases you can feel the stifling humidity, sense the impending danger, and smell the swamp -- you are there. He has an uncanny ability to decipher the motivations of a wide variety of characters from all levels of society in the Deep South. His books are moody and dark, but with redemptive themes. The universal conflict between Good and Evil is effectively contained within the soul of one man -- a modern-day knight in not-so-shining armor that you wish you knew.

[Rick Hautala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I give this one TEN STARS? ... I love James Lee Burke's writing, and I consider him THE BEST writer working today (Shakespeare and Hawthorne are dead.) I used to think HEARTWOOD was truly his best book to date, but this, pardon the expression, blows everything he's written out of the water. It is a masterpiece for its story, for its description (especially of the devastation), for its honest and unflinching view of humanity, and for the sheer power and scope of storytelling at its ABSOLUTE BEST! Anyone not reading Burke should correct that oversight IMMEDIATELY!

[Rick · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Dave Robicheaux novel with Katrina as a major setting device, you’d think it would be a sure thing fire-cracker of a read minimally and perhaps one of the genre busting breakouts. But no. This is lesser Burke. A convoluted plot that kills its own drama and requires extended periods of suspended disbelief just to keep the pages turning is its most annoying feature. Its most disappointing one is the description of Katrina pulled off the basic coverage of cable news channels and weekly news magazines. If you had to guess you’d guess that Burke was staying at his Missoula residence when Katrina went down and hasn’t yet returned for a visit. There is resignation. There is a tepid, I saw it on CNN, outrage in the introduction and epilogue, and a bizarre ambivalence that runs through the plot and characters. But nothing of what you’d expect from a hard-nosed, locally committed writer—not the telling detail that no one else knows, not the institutional nightmare brought irrefutably to life by his mastery of people and place. It’s just another book in a shades of gray crime series and one that too often makes little sense. Robicheaux is so anxious about his family’s vulnerability to a nutcase killer who seems fixated on his daughter that he refuses to go to work. That makes sense. But a few pages later, when he should be even more anxious, he’s decides to stay home and chill while his wife and daughter go off to a nearby college library (by this point you know it’s because his daughter—or wife—is going to kill the killer so you are barely distracted by the illogical behavior of the hero, just turning the pages to get to the end). Burke lifts real events from Katrina for authenticity’s sake and from other news stories (the Asian immigrant murdered in Detroit on Halloween) to help make the improbable seem probable but doesn’t bestir himself too much at all to rescue this formulaic effort.

[Shannon M (Canada) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late 1990’s I read my first Dave Robicheaux novel; I can’t remember which one. I was reading lots of American thrillers and mysteries at the time—seldom able to acquire any published outside the North American hemisphere in those days—and I had read somewhere that the Robicheaux books by James Lee Burke were among the best American thrillers being published. I finished the book, but was disappointed. To me, it contained too many descriptive sections and the plot meandered; it lacked a straightforward logical story structure. A few years later, I read another from the series, and over a period of 25 years have read several. Burke became an acquired taste, because with each one I read, I appreciated his style a bit more; I began to understand how his mind worked.

THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN is one of his best. It contains all of his positives, and even has a good story, even though it does meander a bit before the reader begins to put all of the pieces together. There are many great descriptive phases scattered throughout the narrative. Here is an example:

The power in their bodies makes you think of a tightly wound steel spring, aching for release, waiting for the slightest of external triggers.

A Brief Synopsis

It is 2005 and the hurricane Katrina has just hit New Orleans. Dave Robicheaux is working with the sheriff’s office in Iberia Parish, which was called to assist in the clean up operation after the flooding that destroyed much of the inner city. Clete Purcell was working for a bail bondsman just before Katrina hit, trying to round up a couple of bail runners. The story follows several main threads: Otis Baylor, whose daughter is recovering from a violent rape by four black men; Bertrand Melancon, a black man who, along with three colleagues, is looting the flooded houses that have been deserted; and Sidney Kovick,a gangster whose house was torn apart by by the looters. All have run ins with Ronald Bledsoe, a man with an odd face, supposedly working as a PI.

Like all Robicheaux novels, all of the characters have flaws, even Dave and Clete (“the Bobbsey Twins from homicide”), but almost from the beginning, it is obvious that true darkness exists in the form of Bledsoe—the truly evil characters in Burke’s novels often have abnormal faces. The storyline follows the interactions of the five main characters with each other and with Bledsoe. Interspersed are short deviations into the fates of other characters whose lives briefly connect with these five—short, but excellent, depictions.

Summary

As with all Robicheaux novels, this is really a morality tale, comparing various levels of sinful behaviour. Is Melancon, a rapist, killer and petty thief, as bad as Bledsoe or can Melancon achieve redemption? (Bledsoe can never be redeemed.) Burke’s writing follows a neurodivergent pattern—he concentrates on the trees (the characters) and it is often difficult to find the forest (the story plotline). Sure, I could find a few errors in logic if I took the overall structure apart, although, in the end, all the major themes converge. But Burke shouldn’t be read in terms of conventional neurotypical thinking. He should be read as a poet and a moralist. If one can release oneself from thinking in terms of a logical straight-line structure, as I finally learned to do, it is possible to appreciate the breadth of this novel.

[Aditya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burke has been consistently brilliant at writing about nightmares that lurk just below society's subconscious. In a macabre way, post Katrina New Orleans is the perfect setting for him. The hurricane ravaged the city and provided a once in a lifetime free for all buffet for every lowlife as law and order completely broke down in the aftermath. As a chronicle of the real life tragedy The Tin Roof Blowdown remains pretty good, as an eulogy to the devastation of Louisiana it is incredible however the crime narrative itself doesn't work for me.

A bunch of punks inadvertently rob the city's biggest mobster as Katrina rages on. Their big heist goes awry as the house opposite to them belonged to one of their rape victims. Two of them are incapacitated, the score is lost and the mobster brings in a psycho to retrieve what he lost. It's a regular Burke yarn where the mysteries will be answered as a side effect to the character's journeys.

Like most of his plots, it has a lot of interconnected threads hanging in the balance for almost the entire book but the answers at the end provide enough resolution without spelling everything out. One particular connection that Robicheaux makes at the end is pretty tenuous. It explores the same themes as his other works with a couple of tweaks. A middle class white man gets chewed up by the system instead of the uneducated black one. A rapist gets the redemption arc which is usually reserved in Burke books for a bit more sympathetic characters.

Robicheaux is one of my favorite crime protagonists but his actions did not ring true to his characterization through the past fifteen novels. His daughter is repeatedly threatened and he knows the location of the perp yet he keeps backing down from confrontation. A more passive Robicheaux works (see entries #9 The Cadillac Jukebox and #10 Sunset Limited) but not in the same narrative where a sadist keeps threatening to rape his daughter. A new reader won't even register this criticism and call this nitpicking. Burke even provides in story logic of both Robicheaux and Purcell feeling wasted and haunted by New Orleans' destruction and wanting to avoid further violence. But as someone who has read the books chronologically I thought the actions were not organic and a plot contrivance.

The dialogue remains absolutely brilliant, the local color and wit mixing together effortlessly. New Orleans is more of a character than ever. And like all of Burke's characters it is eccentric and larger than life yet with failings and fear that makes it exceedingly human. I loved the passages where Burke reminisces about the history of the city. He never sugarcoats it, yet he is nostalgic for days when a symbiotic relationship between mob and cops existed. His hurt is obvious when he puts the blame for hurricane damage squarely on the government's shoulders. He is like a bereaved friend delivering an eloquent speech at a wake.

The obvious agony Burke feels for Katrina's victims gives The Tin Roof Blowdown an emotional resonance which makes fans overrate it in Burke canon. I will be harsher because the most enduring aspect of the series - Robicheaux's characterization left me wanting a bit more. Rating - 3/5

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burke is absolutely brilliant at bringing the soggy, muggy, grimy landscape of New Orleans to life. Wallow in that, and enjoy his unsettled, impossible-to-pin-down characters. For me he goes too far: the rapist of a teenage girl is repentant, the mobster who brutally murders people is sympathetic because his toddler was killed.
The story is not particularly credible: Katrina has just wiped out civilization. It comes and goes in a few pages--I was hoping for the aftermath to be the setting, with all the problems of blocked roads, lack of power, failed communications, displaced people. But no, we're back to business as usual, except that there are more abandoned buildings than usual, and the commute is worse.
Hundreds of suspicious deaths, dozens of murders, thousands of assaults and robberies, so Dave is loaned to NOPD to help with the caseload. His priority? A looter was shot and killed while looting--it happens this is the same bunch who recently raped a teenager. Dave thinks it was the homeowner who shot the looter, as it happens the homeowner's daughter was the rape victim. Already the coincidences have been piled too high.
But also the rapist/looters have stolen a stash worth millions from a local gangster, who is now hunting them to recover the loot.
Dave, thrown into an impossible vortex of crimes, has a different approach to police work. Lots of harassing the homeowner, the gangster, and others. He meets with and chest-bumps bad guys, apparently believing he is in 1880 Tombstone and he needs to make them draw first.
People get killed, people get threatened, and Dave plods along, trying to badger the homeowner into confessing. Its all weird, rather dull, and more a way of killing time until we can finish the book.
To make my experience here even more irritating, I listened to part of this on audio, until I discovered the two versions (audio and print) didn't match: the audio book omits scenes and parts of scenes, I would guess about a quarter of the book. WTH? Did the publisher look at the draggy print version and cut out some of the wasted words? Or did the incoherence of the story mean they could pay for an abridged audio book and nobody would notice? All unsatisfying.

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tra le rovine di New Orleans

Molti autori contemporanei di polizieschi/thriller sono soliti dedicare ai luoghi e all’ambientazione degli eventi uno spazio e un valore non inferiore a quello riservato al plot dell’indagine vera e propria, ma nessuno come James Lee Burke sa conferire alla pagina il fascino sprigionato dal territorio, un po’ per l’oggettiva bellezza dei paesaggi di New Orleans, dei tramonti e delle paludi della Louisiana costiera, un po’ perché da queste parti Burke ci vive e ne conosce ogni aspetto ed ogni seducente attrazione.

Qui, rispetto agli altri romanzi della serie del detective Robicheaux (una delle poche che ancora seguo con costanza) l’ingrediente aggiunto è costituito dall’arrivo e dalle devastanti conseguenze dell’uragano Katrina.

Burke, attraverso le parole dei suoi personaggi, ma ancor più con inserti che in alcune pagine assumono quasi il sapore di un reportage, ci testimonia tutta la forza e l’orrore di questa tragedia con dettagli ed elementi che non conoscevamo, come ad esempio il dato che le vittime (un paio di migliaia) furono dovute ai crolli e alla furia delle acque ma anche, in misura non molto inferiore, alla follia degli uomini, agli sciacalli, ai regolamenti di conti, ai vigilantes, alle sparatorie fra bande ed etnie rivali o fra gli innumerevoli balordi e gli zelanti difensori delle proprietà, approfittando della totale paralisi dell’apparato statale e federale.

Questo ci porta direttamente all’interno della trama di “L’urlo del vento” ed al ruolo di Robicheaux alle prese con una delle più difficili e controverse situazioni della sua carriera, con elementi che fanno risuonare nella memoria il passato di veterano del Vietnam, testimone di barbarie che mai avrebbe creduto di rivivere nella sua madrepatria.

Ancor più che nei precedenti episodi, la catastrofe ambientale sembra portare fra queste pagine “villain” di inaudita malvagità e cinismo, giovani sciacalli balordi che si rivelano rosi dal rimorso e all’opposto notabili, uomini d’affari e relative consorti che dimostrano una totale mancanza di scrupoli, preti coraggiosi e cittadini vigliacchi, tutti mescolati dalla devastazione circostante che sembra avere travolto anche le minime norme della convivenza civile.

Nelle pieghe del “caso” capitato in questo marasma fra capo e collo a Robicheaux e al suo ineffabile partner Clete Purcel, i due non esiteranno a indugiare nella contemplazione, con affranta malinconia, del panorama di distruzione della magnifica New Orleans della loro giovinezza trasformata in poche ore in un cumulo di macerie, acquitrini di fango e cadaveri galleggianti.

Sull’intreccio poliziesco non merita soffermarsi più di tanto, poiché, come spesso avviene nei romanzi di Burke, non presenta aspetti di particolare rilevanza e originalità: per conferire a “L’urlo del vento” la qualità del romanzo forse più riuscito dell’autore sono più che sufficienti gli elementi che ho cercato di richiamare.

[The Girl with the Sagittarius Tattoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another outstanding crime thriller, with an appropriately melancholy pall thanks to Hurricane Katrina playing a central role in the events.

In The Tin Roof Blowdown, three young men from the Ninth Ward are moving from house to house searching for anything of value in the days following Katrina. In one home they assault a young white woman; in a wealthier part of town, they destroy a home that had been spared the worst of the disaster, finishing what Katrina started. Behind a wall, they discover a bag of coke, a bundle of counterfeit cash, and a bag of stolen blood diamonds. They steal it all, thinking they've just hit the jackpot.

The boys wanted to wreak a little havoc, but now they've bitten off way more than they could chew. One by one, some very, VERY bad men track down the thieves and pick them off until only one is left. He knows his friend Andre and his brother Eddie are gone for good, and Bertrand does some serious soul searching as he considers what kind of man he thought he was versus what he's actually become. This storyline is immensely satisfying and shows Burke's talent at its best.

Meanwhile, Dave and Clete are working the case of the woman raped by the trio. Thelma, it turns out, was only in town with her family while her father worked as an insurance adjuster. Her parents are understandably enraged about what happened to their daughter, and since the police either can't or won't prioritize her case, decide to seek justice themselves. Meanwhile, the man whose home was vandalized and robbed seeks the return of his very valuable property....

Once again, JLB has created an exceptionally evil bad guy in Ronald Bledsoe. This soft spoken, well-mannered psycho is after the diamonds, and damn near everybody between him and his goal are fair game. Every page with Ronald on it gave me the willies.

As any Floridian will tell you, 2004 was a particularly devastating year for our state. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne hit us one after another. I clearly remember how awful it was - from wasted trips to every conceivable retailer for things that were already sold out (including gasoline) to the awfulness of riding out the storms themselves. No power, the sky black as night during midday, calming down pets, winds howling like a freight train... It's not for the faint of heart and thank God, everybody I know made it through the year okay - in body if not property.

And then 2005 came, bringing Hurricanes Katrina and Rita straight for New Orleans. Dear God, the city is below or barely at sea level! Every Floridian (and everybody else in the southern US) was glued to the TV, watching and praying that the storm would jog its path. It did not.


Katrina landfall, August 29, 2005

I watched the news then; I've been back to the city since. The absolute devastation wreaked is indescribable. You could say it was like a bomb went off, but that doesn't describe the meters of standing water that simply would not drain. To this day there are sections of the city and outskirts, including Slidell and Metairie, that have still not been rebuilt. It's a travesty that such a disaster could happen in the United States without the area being fully restored. IT'S BEEN EIGHTEEN YEARS. The crooked, no-good politicians and businessmen who stole the millions raised from hurricane relief should be flayed alive.


Katrina aftermath, photo taken 11 years later

I digress. The Tin Roof Blowdown - another highly recommended entry in the Dave Robicheaux series.

[miteypen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part of this book was its descriptions of what Katrina and Rita did to New Orleans because it was seen through the eyes of the main character. The mystery was secondary to that, IMO.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at page 110 or so. This is not for me, I don’t have time for virtue-signaling when I have 500 books in my TBR (tonight, on Hoarders).

The pacing wasn’t great either, it starts off in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and then jumps weeks forward, then jumps ahead again, and I just didn’t care enough.

The prose is very good and Burke has an exceptional way with words. I wish it carried over to his storytelling, but it doesn’t. I read Burke once before and I remember a similar problem last time.

This is book 16 in a series so maybe other people will enjoy if they’re in love with these characters, but it was flat for me.

[João Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

“blues por new orleans”, no original “The Tin Roof Blowdown”, publicado em 2007 pelo norte-americano James Lee Burke (n. 1936) é o 16º livro com o detective Dave Robicheaux.
O furacão Katrina está a devastar a costa do Lousiana…
Nova Orleães - depois do furacão Katrina

James Lee Burke “mistura” admiravelmente detalhes e descrições verídicas das consequências e do rescaldo do furacão Katrina com uma narrativa ficcional criminal/policial dominada por duas subtramas – a história do padre Jude LeBlanc (com cancro da próstata e viciado em drogas) e a investigação a uma quadrilha de assaltantes “negros” (André Rochon e o sobrinho Kevin e os irmãos Melancon, Bertrand e Eddy).
Dave Robicheaux, detective na paróquia de New Iberia, é enviado de emergência para a vizinha Nova Orleães, com o intuito de “tentar” manter a aparência da ordem e da lei, num território devastado, dominado por ladrões e saqueadores oportunistas, numa zona fragmentada económica e racialmente.
“blues por new orleans” é muito mais do que um excelente romance policial; é um magnífico trabalho literário de profundo valor histórico sobre a destruição de uma das zonas mais bonitas e emblemáticas da costa do Louisiana, particularmente a cidade de Nova Orleães, onde sucessivos anos de incúria política e económica, na manutenção do sistema de diques e dos canais “bayous”, que funcionam como barreiras naturais à propagação das catástrofes naturais, furacões, cíclicas na zona do Golfo do México - colapsaram e sobre o falhanço institucional de organizações locais e federais, que se revelaram incapazes de prever a dimensão da catástrofe e de planearem e organizarem as operações de busca e salvamento.
James Lee Burke constrói uma narrativa dominada por personagens ambíguas – Dave Robicheaux e o seu amigo Clete Purcel; e o mafioso e vingativo Sidney Kovick, florista de profissão, e o ladrão e violador Bertrand Melancon - homens expostos à rejeição e à crueldade, numa mistura explosiva de comportamentos imprevisíveis, mafiosos e “pequenos” ladrões, violadores e sociopatas, mas em que cada um à sua maneira procura a redenção, expiando os seus pecados e as suas amarguras, revelando um amor incondicional pela “sua” família.
“blues por new orleans” é um “verdadeiro” e genuíno policial, com diálogos intensos e uma escrita cinematográfica – muito, muito bom…

Nota: Traduzir "The Tin Roof Blowdown" para "blues por new orleans" não faz sentido. Revela-se enganador, porque induz em erro, misturando o New Orleans blues, um subgénero musical, com o cenário de New Orleans - a música não tem nenhuma relevância no enredo. No livro aparece sempre "Nova Orleães" não se justificando que no título apareça "New Orleans".

"Aquela noite estava cheia de imagens surreais, que suspeito terem origem mais no inconsciente do que na mente consciente. As pessoas tinham o aspecto e comportavam-se como o fazem nos nossos sonhos - não completamente reais, os seus corpos iridescentes com suor, a roupa em farrapos, como criaturas a viver os seus destinos numa paisagem lunar." (Pág. 52)

"O contraste entre a normalidade do meu trabalho na paróquia de New Iberia e os sete dias que passara em Nova Orleães era como a diferença entre o vigor e a confiança da juventude e a condição mental de um homem arbitrariamente afligido por uma doença fatal." (Pág. 91)

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

These books, which I listen to on tape, are like sedatives. Dave Robicheaux is a dark conflicted hero. He is the male version of "the hooker with a heart of gold" stereotype.

James Lee Burk has always painted very vivid and poignant pictures of New Orleans and the area surrounding it. This is his first novel post hurricane, and you can just feel his heart seizing as he writes a fictional account of Katrina and the aftermath.

I know this book type isn't for everyone. I don't know if the fact that I have read all his other Robicheaux Novels and have grown fond of the characters makes me feel differently, but what a beautiful poem this book is to the struggle between good and evil. When he talks about that I wondered for a moment if it was way over the top, and then I realized in some very basic way I felt the same.

[Mark Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much more than a police procedural! This is James Lee Burke's elegiac for America in the aftermath of Katrina. So much rage and pain, but also a great story and characters who are trying to carry on despite the disaster, despite finding they didn't live in the country they had thought. The writing is so much better, the ideas so far surpass what you would find in an average detective mystery, that James Lee Burke should be up for literary prizes at the same time he writes a great page-turning whodunnit.

[Masteatro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Todo un descubrimiento.
Ya sabía que me gustaban las novelas ambientadas en Nueva Orleans pero es que las descripciones de Lee Burke me han encantado.
Estamos ante una novela negra-negra que tiene como telón de fondo el huracán Katrina que asoló la ciudad en 2009. Está historia nos enseña que las fuerzas de la naturaleza pueden ser devastadoras pero que las de los seres humanos pueden ser aún peores.
El policía protagonista, Dave Robicheaux me ha gustado mucho y me ha caído muy bien así que, por supuesto, seguiré leyendo esta serie de novelas protagonizadas por él.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

In what feels more like "historical fiction” than serial detective fiction, Robicheaux and Burke experience (and survive, but are irrevocably impacted? altered, changed? by) Katrina (and Rita), and it’s no minor, passing thing. So, while, in many ways, this is “more of the same” – or just another oh-so-lyrical Robicheaux and friends mayhem and madness mashup, it also felt like something rather different. (No, it’s not a comprehensive, fictional account or chronical of Katrina’s destruction and aftermath, but the storm anchors and and animates and informs and colors what otherwise is a true-to-form, but (to my mind) better than some, installment in the Robicheaux story arc.

Most of the familiar faces in Robicheaux’s ever-morphing circle appear – and the core group (less Batiste, who I concede I miss) features prominently (although one of my personal favorites, Tripod, doesn’t get much material to work with here).

In terms of level of complexity, this bordered on the edge of the one-subplot-too-many spectrum, but that’s OK. Particularly given Burke’s decision to center pretty much everything on Katrina, I might have favored a slightly more streamlined plot or storyline. In the end, however, it worked out just fine, and the pages turned easily and quickly, and I was disinclined to put the book down and turn to other things.

At this point, I've read at more than 20 JLB novels (it's probably time to get an accurate count again), and I don't expect to stop anytime soon. Alas, recently restocked with a couple in my to-read pile (although I almost never read them consecutively, I do tend to buy a few at at time and keep one or more in the pile for when I'm looking for a safe/reliable choice). This one was perfect for a train-coach/bus-hotel combo. If I continue to ration, I expect I'm still a few (or at least a couple) of years away from catching up to the author on Robicheaux...

[Kathryne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burke centers this complex story around the tragedy of hurricane Katrina. When I bought the book, I was a bit reluctant, wondering how in the world he could take such haunting images as were created by the aftermath of that killer storm, and diminish them enough to allow us to focus on the foibles of his characters. Well, James Lee Burke is the quintessential wordsmith. Not only does he use his words well, he uses them with emotion that tells us he has lived in dark places. Either that, or he dreams there.

I once listened to an interview of Steven King, where he revealed that his inspiration for his writing came often from his dreams, not much from his life experiences.

Who knows with James Lee Burke? His writing is rich, gritty, often nastalgic and violent as our world can be. Like God, of whom he occasionally speaks, he does have a great sense of humor in the midst of the chaos.

This book is one of his best.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been slowly but surely reading my way through all of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series. The Tin Roof Blowdown is one of the very best of the series. The Tin Roof Blowdown has all the familiar characters and I was glad to see Alafair present in this story. I had forgotten all the details of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, but it is covered thoroughly and Robicheaux blasts the insurance carriers denying claims, rip-off artists taking advantage of those who lost homes, and government suppliers looking to make a quick buck from the tragedy. One of the best aspects of this series is Robicheaux’s love of New Orleans and Louisiana. He’s the first to admit there is a lot that needs fixing, but it’s also a beautiful place that has been his home for a long time and he loves it. Add a psychotic serial killer, a missing treasure of blood diamonds and cash, a trio of low-life druggies and rapists, and even without the hurricane it’s a powerful story.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

First...Will Patton IS Dave Robicheaux...and Clete Purcell...and Helen Swallow. He makes Mr. Burke's rich prose an intimate conversation with the reader. I am all about the audio for these books.

Second...prepare to be haunted for days, even weeks, by the pain, sadness and loss in these words. Only someone who has grown with and loved New Orleans - and New Iberia - as much as Mr. Burke could have written this book.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me a while to get to this 2007 offering from James Lee Burke. Hurricane Katrina is a distant memory for some, but this book is a profound memorial to those very dark days. Burke's writing gift is undeniable and he is definitely the right man to pierce through the unspeakable events reaching the soul of the reader.

Yes, it is gritty, dark stuff.

Library Loan

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.20 First James Lee Burke novel. I never got completely used to the dialogue and slang. Had to look some things up. Not a book I could read quickly. I read every word enjoying the descriptions and writing style. James mixes truth with fiction and I learned a few things about Louisiana and the Kennedy assassination. The main story revolves around the pursuit of a black man who hid some stolen diamonds during Katrina. He has a few people after him and their side stories are interesting too. Will definitely be reading a lot more of this author.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could hardly watch the news coverage of Katrina. It was too cruel and awful and I couldn't do anything to help. I wanted to participate in the pet rescue, but someone would have ended up rescuing me before it was over. Reading Jim Burke's book brings it all back and I have a love-hate relationahip with the reading experience. I dread going into that world again, but I'm also fascinated by it and can hardly put it down. Robicheax provides the voice for all those enraged by a government that is all style and no substance and for all those undone by the forces of nature. I can hear Jim Burke's ironic voice throughout.

[Russ Melrose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite James Lee Burke novels. He does a wonderful job of chronicling the post-Katrina landscape, and Dave Robicheaux is the perfect narrator to guide us through the dark, murky aftermath of Katrina's New Orleans. The story and characters are a perfect reflection of a city in shambles. And it's not the mystery that grabs you as much as it is the atmospheric landscape with it's desperate characters, all scrambling to take advantage of the chaotic aftermath.

James Lee Burke is the finest detective/mystery writer alive today. Just my opinion.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Lee Burke's "Dave Robicheaux" books follow a fairly similar formula. I've read most of them, so I know.
Here's what you can expect:
1) There will be multiple grisly deaths.
2) Dave will reflect on his time in Vietnam and his time as an alcoholic.
3) Dave's old partner, Clete Purcel, will stumble through the case like a wet elephant, trying to do good and silence his inner torment.
4) There will be at least one mobster...some are colorful...some are dangerous...most are both.
5) All the murders Dave is investigating will tie together in some tangential way.
6) Dave's family will be in danger from the current case(s).
7) There will be one or two free range sociopaths getting involved and harming innocents.
8) Dave will bend the letter of the law to uphold the spirit of the law.
9) Dave will get in some sort of trouble with his boss or the FBI or another law enforcement agency.
10) There will be at least one big shootout, possibly more.

There are more, but you get the idea.

All that being said, Burke's books are usually quite enjoyable. I've also enjoyed the films they've made of them (even if critics did not).

"The Tin Roof Blowdown," however, is a chore to get into. Why? Burke spends roughly the first quarter of the book detailing the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. The details are nauseating and frequent and very depressing. I understand that he's trying to use facts to set a mood, and that he may feel a need to educate the uninformed, but I felt Burke was piling it on a bit thick about Katrina--more than was required to set up his various plotlines (which I won't spoil here). Eventually, if you can slog through the Katrina portion of the book, Burke settles down into his usual mode of storytelling. And it becomes a more conventional genre detective thriller.
The first portion of the book is good writing, though it's about subject matter not all will appreciate finding when looking for an entertaining detective story.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read a few of Burke’s previous books but I had a hard time with The Tin Roof Blowdown. Some of the lyrical prose for which Burke is known is present, and the dialogue is often sharp, but I nearly gave up after the first thirty pages. It felt to me as if two books had been clunked together – one a political commentary on Katrina and its aftermath (particularly in the first 60 pages or so), the other a police procedural. Rather than letting the story do the commentary, Burke has whole paragraphs effectively setting out his views on the catastrophe and who was responsible for the mayhem that followed. It simply didn’t work for me. My sense is that Burke let his personal anger and frustration bubble over into the text at the story’s expense. Added to that the story itself stretched reality to breaking point, with multiple sub-plots that conveniently overlap and opportune lapses in law enforcement procedure. I generally don’t mind that in thrillers, but this time out I just couldn’t buy into it. Robicheaux uses the law when it suits and takes it into his own hands the rest of the time, seemingly without any penalty. The fact that Robicheaux’s still alive at this stage given he’s regularly up to his neck in dramatic cases that always seem to involve violence directed at him and his family is a miracle. I’ve enjoyed the past books, but The Tin Roof Blowdown was, for me, a let down.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will Patton 5 stars, January 3, 2013
By Ellen Rappaport (Florida)
This review is from: The Tin Roof Blowdown (Robicheaux, Book 16) (Dave Robicheaux) (Mass Market Paperback)
I had to give Will Patton 5 stars. He earned them and deserves them for his fabulous narration/performance of James Lee Burks' ongoing Dave Robicheaux series on CD. Each character is portrayed with an individuality that enhances the depth of Burke's story.

I have listened to several of Burke's Dave Robicheaux books and enjoyed them immensely. I highly recommend listening to them on CD for any fan of this series.

Dave Robichaeux must find two serial rapists while experiencing that aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The mystery behind one of the rapists' becomes more macabre by the minute. Sadistic as well as heinously repulsive in more ways than one. But are these two monsters acting alone or together. The fear portrayed in voice by Will Patton is realistic and hair raising.

Once starting this story on CD it is impossible to turn away from it even though it is quite lengthy.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is another superb piece of N'Awlins noir from James Lee Burke, one of the best mystery writers out there, period. This weaves together a few strands of criminal suspense and sets it in the Crescent City just after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Burke cranks up the tension and keeps it simmering as he jumps around following a few different story lines that may or may not intersect. Of course he has his fine lead detective, Dave Robicheaux, right in the middle of it all - there is a lot going, and Burke keeps the plates spinning and balls flying thru the air.

In this, a group of young Black kids, serious troublemakers, are out in a boat looking for some post-hurricane loot when a couple of them are shot by a local homeowner. The local cops are inclined to let it go, but the feds demand a serious investigation. These young thugs, in addition to raping a nice young lady who happened to be the daughter of one of the families on the block, made the mistake of busting into the home of a local crime boss, Sidney Kovick, and stealing some blood diamonds from him. Then there is the situation of a drug-addicted priest who seems to have disappeared during the hurricane, and his Central American girlfriend. Add to this the presence of some hardcore goons - a real creepy character named Ronald Bledsoe and his mercenary compadre, Bobby Mack Rydell. It is a little unclear what they are after but destruction is their metier. Robicheaux is going to need a hand dealing with this crew, and he gets it from his hard-drinking macho buddy Clete Purcell. He is going to need it because this time Dave himself, and his family, come under fire from some of these goons. Robicheaux has many of the qualities that your usual pulp detective possesses, e.g. a laconic stoicism and a history of alcohol abuse, but he is also a complex, thoughtful character who is rarely lovable but feels pretty darn real.

Now this summary fails to convey the color and strength of Burke's writing. There are some fine, poetic passages and descriptions, and plenty of tough, terse dialogue that any writer would be proud to produce. Check this out for example:

"Wednesday morning I experienced one of those instances when middle-class people walk into a law enforcement agency and in the next few minutes trustingly consign there lives to a bureaucratic system that operates with all the compassion of dice clattering out of a leather cup."

And this:

"I like to remember the era in which I grew up as one of duck-hunting dawns and summer-afternoon crab boils in a shady pavilion and college dances on Spanish Lake under oak trees that were strung with Japanese lanterns. . . . But there was a harsh side to the Louisiana of my youth too, one that isn't always convenient to remember. The majority of people were poor, and for generations the oligarchy that ruled the state exerted every effort in its power to ensure they stayed that way. The Negro was the scapegoat for our problems, the trade unions the agents of northern troublemakers. With the coming of integration, every demagogue in the state could not wait to stoke the fires of racial fear and hatred. Many of their constituents rose to the occasion."

There is a brooding cynicism at work here which is appropriate for fine noir writing, but Burke sees the big picture too, not just the violence and manipulations of the struggle between the criminal element and the forces of law and order. Unfortunately the plot does get a touch confused (or else I would have given it a fifth star.) The story of the priest, Jude LeBlanc, starts out prominently then fizzles out. We find out towards the end that he was killed, but it is never entirely clear what happened to him. This makes me wonder if Burke started out with a subplot there that did not work out, so he brought it to this clunky conclusion. Also, there is the appearance of a character named Bo Diddley Wiggins, another old acquaintance of Robicheaux's, a former violent jerk and now a successful businessman - somehow his presence in the story never fully makes sense.

However, this is still a top of the line thriller, and hats off to Burke for this fine, dark creation.