The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke's prose is rich and lyrical. I have been reading all of the books in the Dave Robicheaux series since the beginning of the year. The book that has influenced his life the most is the 1929 family tragedy 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner. Their daughter, Alafair Burke, is also a mystery novelist.

Shortly before his move to Montana, he taught for several years in the Creative Writing program at Wichita State University in the 1980s.īurke and his wife, Pearl, split their time between Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana.

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. 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 attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has twice received the Edgar Award for Best Novel, for Black Cherry Blues in 1990 and Cimarron Rose in 1998.īurke was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. James Lee Burke is an American author best known for his mysteries, particularly the Dave Robicheaux series. 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. In a singular style that defines the genre, James Lee Burke has created a hauntingly bleak picture of life in New Orleans after Katrina. 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. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. The power grid of the city has been destroyed and New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society.

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. This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers when he is deployed to New Orleans. In the waning days of summer, 2005, a storm with greater impact than the bomb that struck Hiroshima peels the face off southern Louisiana.

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke