[book_talk] book review--James Lee Burke
- From: "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind Chit Chat" <Blind-Chit-Chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Books for the Blind" <Books4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Blind Book Lovers Cafe" <bblc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Book Talk" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:29:07 -0800
_The Tin Roof Blowdown_ by James Lee Burke
narrated by Will Patton
I recently experienced difficulties with my MP3 player on which I store and play
my Audible purchases, so even though I had a couple of James Lee Burke books on
hand I couldn't read them as they wouldn't download to my SanDisk player and its
new mini-SD card. How much was problems with the SanDisk unit and how much was
the computer going haywire I can't say, but I ended up buying a new laptop AND a
new player, only to find that now the old player is working fine. I ended up
reformatting my 8-gig mini-SD card and, once I had all my Audible books
downloaded properly to my new HP laptop, sorted them out between the two SanDisk
players so that all my fantasy is on one unit and the rest is on the other. And
at last I managed to read those three newest James Lee Burke books!
Otis Baylor is certain that if any homes at all will survive the coming
hurricane, those of his neighbor Tom Clagget and his own should be among them.
Both are well built and placed on some of the little high ground in all of New
Orleans. What both he and Tom Clagget are convinced of is that abandoning the
city in the face of Hurricane Katrina is tantamount to inviting looters inside
to gut the two homes, so he refuses to evacuate his family, and Clagget invites
a number of vigilante friends and their weapons to his place so as to be in
place to blow any would-be looters away.
Bertrand deMelisende and his brother Eddie are two of the looters that Baylor
and Clagget fear. Accompanied by their buddy Andre and his nephew Kevin, they
head for the richest neighborhood in New Orleans intent on getting away with
whatever valuables they can find. They end up inside the Kovich home, opposite
the Baylor and Clagget homes, where they appear to score big! Inside the walls
of the house they're looting they find a stash of heroin, a snub-nosed
thirty-eight, and more cash than they can imagine. And Bertrand finds one more
valuable, about which he tells neither his brother nor their companions. This
could be the means for him to break with his illegal activities to date,
allowing him to start over across the country from where he lives now.
Things go south once the four black hoods get outside the home and they start in
their stolen outboard down the waterway that has covered the street, for there
is a single shot fired from one of the houses opposite that goes through Eddie's
neck and kills young Kevin. Eddie survives, but is now a quadriplegic, and
Bertrand is certain he is to blame for the fates of Eddie and Kevin, for wasn't
he the one who stole the boat from a priest who'd been intent on saving his
parishoners from the attic of his church's belltower, leaving both the priest
and most of those he'd been trying to save to drown in the rising floodwaters
down in the Ninth District?
Dave Robicheaux finds himself trying to sort the whole situation out. Father
Jude LeBlanc had been one of his friends when they were growing up together in
New Iberia, and now the priest, who'd become a junkie in the wake of developing
a painful cancer, is missing somewhere in the ruins of Katrina-ravaged New
Orleans. The feds are intent on prosecuting whoever killed the looter Kevin and
shot Eddie deMellisende under Civil Rights regulations, and it is plain that it
wasn't either Tom Clagget or any of his gun-toting buddies. No, it appears that
the fatal shot was fired from the Baylor property, but how does one prove
whether Otis's Springfield was fired by himself, his teenaged daughter, or his
troubled second wife? Daughter Thelma admits to having recognized two of those
intent on looting the Kovich home as being among the four who'd brutally
gang-raped her a year ago, after all.
But now it appears that the enigmatic Ronald Bledsoe is intent on destroying
Dave's own family, targeting his daughter Alafair and his third wife Molly
Boyle, and it's up to Dave and Clete to figure out why and who's behind his
brutal vendetta.
For once we aren't seeing Dave's apparently endless fight to expose the
corruption of the richest of the citizens of New Iberia, New Orleans, and all
sites in between. I consider this perhaps the best book in the whole Robicheaux
series, and I was left wondering to the end as to the motivation Bledsoe has to
seek out the deMelisendes and the Baylors, as well as why so many appear willing
to help him in his decision to kill Alafair Robicheaux. And the ending is
perfect, right up to Molly's directive not to give "them" power. Definitely
highly recommended. And Will Patton, as usual, does a superb job of narrating
the book.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
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