The Tin Roof Blowdown (Robicheaux, Book 16) (Dave Robicheaux)

LARGE PRINT MYSTERY

THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN

James Lee Burke

A storm with greater impact than the bomb that struck Hiroshima peels the face off southern Louisiana. This is the gruesome reality Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers as he is deployed to New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators. The power grid has been destroyed. There is no law, no order, no sanctuary. In this apolcalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the looting criminals.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Although The Tin Roof Blowdown describes the storm and its horrors, Mr. Burke does not dwell on their shock value. He leaves that to others and moves on to tell his own kind of story. Like the novelists who have most effectively captured the impact on New York of the World Trade Center collapse, he concentrates more intensely on his characters inner lives than on the havoc around them. In Mr. Burke's universe of knights and grifters the post-Hurricane Katrina days are full of opportunity. The chaos tears off the veneers of civilized character to show what these people are really made of.