In the waning days of summer, 2005, 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. 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. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans 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. In a singular style that defies genre, James Lee Burke has created a hauntingly bleak picture of life in New Orleans after Katrina. 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.

Follows the adventures of detective Dave Robicheaux, who struggles with alcoholism and rage while fighting to protect lives in Katrina-devastated New Orleans.

Follows the adventures of detective Dave Robicheaux, who struggles with alcoholism and rage while fighting to protect lives in Katrina-devastated New Orleans.

Mysteries and detective stories are among the most popular of books but the writers of such genre fiction suffer from a perception that their work is to be taken less seriously than so-called literary fiction. The novels of James Lee Burke, one of the most distinguished writers of crime novels, challenge that notion, as do the 12 essays in this collection. This work examines Burke as a writer who has expanded the mystery-detective genre with an astonishing diversity of themes, imaginative language and descriptions, and unforgettable characters. He seems unbounded by limitations of genre. An interview with Burke is included.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Flensburg (Englisches Institut), course: American Crime Fiction, language: English, abstract: In this term paper I`m going to deal with the traumatic experiences of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) homicide detective Dave Robicheaux in the Vietnam War in 1965 and their literary function by examining the essential parts of the two books "Neon Rain" and "The Tin Roof Blowdown". Furthermore I will try to find out how the description of Dave ́s experiences and his character correlate with the biography and the character of the author. For the extensive understanding of James Lee Burke I will work out a brief excursus which deals with the special features that are immanent in the southern writer due to the history of the region and the mentality of its inhabitants. I hope that my essay will shed more light on the reasons why Burke uses the image of the Vietnam War so many times in his novels and give clues about his opinion about the engagement of the USA in Southeast Asia. The current state of source material is quite good as Burke is a well-known author and has led many interviews. He also runs a very informative website with lots of links to interviews which I used extensively. My main sources were of course his two books, an instructive biography written by Barbara Bogue and an interesting book about the unique features of the American south.