The Tin Roof Blowdown
Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Simon and Schuster (July 17, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1416548483
ISBN-13: 978-1416548485
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,535 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘In Burke’s meticulously textured 16th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2006’s Pegasus Descending), Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for an account of sin and redemption in New Orleans. When Detective Robicheaux’s department is assigned to investigate the shooting of two looters in a wealthy neighborhood, he learns that they had ransacked the home of New Orleans’s most powerful mobster. Now he must locate the surviving looter before others do, and in the process he learns the fate of a priest who disappeared in the ill-fated Ninth Ward trying to rescue his trapped parishioners. Burke creates dense, rich prose that draws the reader into a web of greed and violence. Each of his characters feels the hands of both grace and of perdition, and the final outcome of their struggle is never quite certain. Burke showcases all that was both right and wrong in our response to this national disaster, proving along the way that nobody captures the spirit of Gulf Coast Louisiana better.‘
—Publisher’s Weekly
It’s a fabulous read. I’m almost finished with it, and continue to be amazed by his writing and by my fascination with it, since it’s not normally a genre I spend much time with. Highly recommended. ★
• 235 Words written by Steve @ 23:53 | 19-Nov-07 in Fiction • Critique It
Reading List: 28-Sep-06
I’m renewing an old acquaintanceship with one of my favorite authors, and one of the classic American collections of all time:
Thurber Carnival by James Thurber
Hardback: 443 pages
Publisher: Modern Library (1994)
ISBN: 0-679-60089-2
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #290,790 in Books
Source: Contra Costa County Library
About this book, Amazon.com wrote:
‘After the chuckles and amidst the chortles, the first-time reader of The Thurber Carnival is bound to utter a discreetly voiced “Huh?” Like Cracker Jacks, there are surprises inside James Thurber’s delicious 1945 smorgasbord of essays, stories, and sketches. This festival is, surprises and all, a collection of earlier collections (mostly), including, among others, gems from My World—and Welcome to It, Let Your Mind Alone!, and The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze. Needless to say, there are also numerous cartoons that, by themselves, are worth the price of admission. While redoubling Thurber’s deserved reputation as a laugh-out-loud humorist and teller-of-gentle-tales, it reintroduces him as a thinker-of-thoughts.‘
—Amazon.com
There are fabulous nuggets in this collection and the writing is still just as wonderful today as it was in its day. ★
• 183 Words written by Steve @ 11:41 | 28-Sep-06 in Reading • Critique It