Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2779633 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Format: Large Print
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 638 pages

Toby Clements, DAILY TELEGRAPH
'the characters are beautifully realised and their motivation strong. But it is the fury at the authorities response to the crisis that gives this its added dimension.'

Review
'The Tin Roof Blowdown is more than a crime novel; more than a literary novel even. It is a work of profound historical value and importance ... To say I enjoyed this book is an understatement ... there were moments when I wanted to put the book down, it was so painful to continue. But I couldn't. Now, I dare say, will anyone else.' (Mark Timlin INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )

'The Tin Roof Blowdown is the novel James Lee Burke was born to write. His imagination has always tended to the apocalyptical - but Hurricane Katrina outdid his worst inventions ... The passages describing the actual flooding are tremendously powerful but Burke also weaves a fully satisfying story into this extreme event.' (David Sexton EVENING STANDARD )

'This New Orleans looks like Bosch and reads like Ballard ... it's worth emphasising that no 'literary' novelist has performed this task of imaginative witness to disaster yet. And none will do it half so well as Burke. ... he proves more forcefully than ever that he can dive down these mean - or drowned - streets and strike both a tragic, and epic, note.' (Boyd Tonkin THE INDEPENDENT )

'In the US, he's often regarded as the crimewriter's crimewriter. But that was before Hurricane Katrina ripped the soul out of Burke's beloved New Orleans and inspired him to write what has to be his most gripping thriller to date ... Burke's descriptions, especially of the aftermath of the hurricane, are more vivid and powerful than any piece of reportage I've yet to come across.' (Henry Sutton THE MIRROR )

'probably his finest novel ... it's quite an achievement to make the 16th novel in a series a personal best, but its more than that - it stands comparison with the best of Southern fiction.' (Peter Guttridge THE OBSERVER )

'occasionally something comes along which transcends the narrow confines of the genre: a book which, by any measure, is a truly wonderful piece of writing. Burke's latest work is a case in point. It confirms, if confirmation were needed, that he is one of America's greatest living novelists.' (THE HERALD )

'The story, about greed and murder and redemption, contains some of Burke's most brilliantly realised characters ... a compelling and moving narrative, punctuated by his devastating descriptions of the ravaged city.' (Susanna Yager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'You feel guilty for enjoying it so much ... a great piece of art has come out of human trouble ... it is his greatest novel' (Boyd Hilton RADIO R LIVE SIMON MAYO BOOKCLUB )

'Burke's prose, jagged and discordant ... has always had a hallucinatory quality, but here his descriptions of drowning, floating corpses and devastated buildings provide a background tableaux of madness and terror that knowingly invokes Bosch's visions of hell.' (METRO )

'Burke mixes street slang and exquisite, but always precise, descriptive writing ... Robicheaux is the perfect vehicle for expressing the brooding and righteous anger which is the only possible response to the failure of the United States Government to organise relief when the levees broke. The Tin Roof Blowdown is proof that current affairs can be worked into fiction. It's account of the destruction wreaked by the floods has an enduring power.' (TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT )

'a beautifully written howl of rage and pain over the disaster - social, political, human - that was Hurricane Katrina ... Burke has crafted a killer mystery and a passionate tribute to to his beloved New Orleans.' (TIME OUT )

'The Tin Roof Blowdown is, inevitably, sadder and angrier than previous Robicheaux novels. We always knew James Lee Burke was a master craftsman of the crime genre. This proves him to be more than that.' (Marcel Berlins THE TIMES )

'there is no doubting the power of the passages devoted to the hurricane's impact, where the author's twin gifts for physical description and biblical rhetoric fuse stunningly to give the novel an apocalyptic backdrop.' (John Dugdale SUNDAY TIMES )

'Burke's novel is a powerful mix of near-journalism reportage ... undercut with a simmering rage at the corporate theft and government incompetence that made the clear-up such a difficult and devisive task.' (IRISH TIMES )

'the characters are beautifully realised and their motivation strong. But it is the fury at the authorities response to the crisis that gives this its added dimension.' (Toby Clements DAILY TELEGRAPH )

Boyd Tonkin, THE INDEPENDENT
'This New Orleans looks like Bosch and reads like Ballard ... it's worth emphasising that no 'literary' novelist has performed this task of imaginative witness to disaster yet. And none will do it half so well as Burke. ... he proves more forcefully than ever that he can dive down these mean - or drowned - streets and strike both a tragic, and epic, note.'

Customer Reviews

The best got better
This novel is the latest in the Dave Robicheaux series. Robicheaux is Burkes flawed hero; an ex-alcoholic cop and a man so basically fair and decent that he almost represents another age. A violent man too, when pushed.

The Tin Roof Blowdown takes place against a backdrop of Hurrican Katrina and the destruction it caused to New Orleans. Called from his local district of New Iberia to help out in beseiged Big Sleazy, Robicheaux gets caught up in the dissapearance of a Catholic Priest, a random shooting that turns out to be anything but and the theft of money and jewels from a member of the mob. Burke weaves a story so involving and creates characters that you care for so much that it was difficult for me not to read this book in one sitting.

Burke does not deal in black and white but in the struggle between light and dark (and the grey areas in between) that wages in all of us. His wrongdoers are often people who have made poor choices or ordinary people caught up in circumstances that they feel unable to control.

Dave and Cletus (his ex-partner and the sort of man we'd all love to have at our side when our backs are against the wall)are characters so real in my mind that I can think of very few authors capable of drawing them so vividly. This book is a triumph and although it is part of a series of books about Dave Robicheaux I would not let that stop you reading it. Read it and I guarrantee you'll want to start at the begining and read them all; it really is that good.

James Lee Burke is one of America's finest authors and I would urge you to check him out. Not only is he an excellent storyteller but as a social commentator on the basic human condition and the immense greed and wickedness that thrives in the 21st Century, he has no peers.

Not totally convinced by this one.
I am an avid reader of crime novels, and have read a wide range of authors in this genre - however, this is only the 2nd James Lee Burke that I have read; and I'm not sure that I will be trying another. perhaps I haven't caught this author at his best, and perhaps I am doing him an injustice, but personally I found the book difficult.

This book has a range of strengths and weaknesses. Parts of it were gripping, but other parts were very confusing and needed reading more than once to fully understand.

To me, one of the biggest weaknesses was the shallowness of many of the characters. Without a clear prior knowledge of the characters from the series, this book was difficult to follow. It is certainly not a stand-alone book.

That having been said, the author has a definite gift for description, and his descriptions of New Orleans in the early days after the two hurricanes of 2005 (Katrina and Rita) are absolutely amazing (although a map to show where the areas were would have been helpful!) The word pictures are second to none, and you can almost believe that you have seen it. It certainly reminds you of the TV pictures that we all saw back then, and the sense of lawlessness that pervaded the area is very evident. Particularly emotive were the descriptions of the flooding in the ninth Ward and its aftermath. The scene in Bertrand's Aunt's house (p. 320) is extremely evocative. You can see (and smell) it.
Here is a short quote to help you see what I mean.

"The yard was stacked with virtually everything the house had once contained: cloth-covered chairs and a sofa, a refrigerator, mattresses, bedsprings, a television set, clothes, food, a chest of drawers with flower decals pasted all over it, stripped wallpaper and carpeting, all of it caked with a greenish-black sludge that had dried like plastic. The windows of the house were tacked over with plywood, a screen in place on the entrance."

On the whole, I am glad that I persevered and finished the book - but am still not sure if I would try another by this author.

A triumph - an insider's view of misery
Once again Burke delivers!
We all saw the images of the misery caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans now we can read the thoughts of a man who saw it all.
Once again marvellous characters - some good some bad - ain't we all!
The reader can actually smell the distruction and putrefaction of a society brought to its knees by nature and the failures of the powers that be. Here nature wins - both the elements and the innate "nature" of man!
A book which is very hard to put down but one which you hope never ends!