He’s got it in spades.īut this is to be expected of a man who’s written more than twenty-five novels, a man who divides his time between seemingly disparate locations – Missoula, Montana and New Iberia, Louisiana. None of this is as easy as Burke makes it look.

Tight, succinct descriptions like the one above or similarly structured vignettes connect and in doing so glide the reader from scene to scene. Somehow he reassured others that the earth was a good place, that the day was a fine one, and that good things were about to happen to all of us.

He had his Jewish mother’s narrow eyes and chestnut hair, and he combed it straight back in a hum, like a character in a 1930s movie. Jude shined the world on and slipped its worst punches and in a fight knew how to swallow his blood and never let people know he was hurt. From the first book I read by him years ago, The Neon Rain to others that included Black Cherry Blues, The Lost Get-Back Boogie, Jolie Blon’s Bounce, and now this one, Burke has played it straight telling his stories and making sure loose ends are tied up when the last page is read. This strikes me as venal artifice by a writer who certainly has reached a point of financial and critical security where such shenanigans are unnecessary and beneath him. He escapes from the cops and vanishes from the book with nearly one-hundred pages left, obviously setting a not-so-subtle stage for a return in another Deaver effort. The bad guy, a most interesting sociopath called The Watchmaker who is a brilliant killer with machinations of Machiavellian stature, is the author of a poem about a cold moon, so one would suppose that he would figure prominently in the denouement of the novel. I bring this up since I just finished reading a book by Jeffrey Deaver titled The Cold Moon. These are of interest on their own, but more importantly they serve to expand and add often curious layers to the main show that centers around the eye of mayhem left behind by a pair of hurricanes.

He easily weaves several ancillary situations into the story line of The Tin Roof Blowdown. Because he’s a damn good writer James Lee Burke knows how to keep a plot going from start to finish with no loose ends or out-of-the-blue surprises that amateurishly attempt to explain and finish off a narrative.

The tin roof blowdown james lee burke