Re: [book_talk] book review--James Lee Burke
- From: Audrey <waterdiva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 19:20:08 -0500
I need to get these. I really like Alafair's books, and have not yet read any
of her father's.
Aud
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 7, 2013, at 6:29 PM, "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> _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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