levon helm; james lee burke

Levon Helm & Sheryl Crow - Evangeline

LEVON HELM 1940 - 2012

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James Lee Burke

I always tell people I’m not a great fan of fiction but that’s not strictly true. Perhaps what I really mean is that I’m not a great fan of what some would call literary fiction.

My type of fiction is yer typical US crime novel, the sort of story that has ‘place’ as a character, and offers interesting moral dilemmas. But wait – there’s more: How about a peep into different communities we’re unlikely to ever visit, each with their own belief sets, social divides and power structures?

The Tin Roof Blowdown, the first of James Lee Burke’s books I’ve ever read, is set in New Orleans during the arrival and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. [Was it really that long ago?]

News reports at the time showed us people trying to find shelter, and showed the widespread destruction Katrina caused. We heard reports of how ill prepared the city/state/country was for a disaster like this, and we heard how early warnings to evacuate were totally useless for poorer people with no cars, no money for transport, or who had no money to stock up on food.

Burke’s book is quite atmospheric, and goes much deeper than news reports could, offering a lot of insights into what it must have been like to live in New Orleans when Katrina hit.

As well as the Katrina story, TTRB provides traditional criminal twists and turns – not so much who-dunits in the Agatha Christie style as why-dunits, how-dunits and who might-doits.

Burke’s writing is not just entertaining, it’s above average good. Just one thing I like in a book is reading a passage and having a “Yeah” moment, or thinking “I really like the way he said that”.

Here’s one of those ‘way that he said it’ moments from TTRB:

Actually I think Sidney had a peculiar kind of secular theology at work in his life that was similar in many ways to those who conflate nationalism and religion and business. For Sidney, “sin” and “failure” and “poverty” were the unholy trinity.