The sense of anger, betrayal, frustration and helplessness felt by the people of southern Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in early September 2005 is all but unimaginable.
The fact that the levees protecting the Big Easy from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain were known to be weak and inadequate to the task of holding strong in the event of a Category 5 and that funding for flood defence in the area was actually cut is nothing short of criminal negligence.
The fact that the people of New Orleans were forced to fend for themselves following the flooding when there was a total breakdown in society and the systems and authorities that govern it - in the world's wealthiest and most powerful country - is still almost impossible to believe.
With all that in the background, and indeed in the foreground of The Tin Roof Blowdown, it is surprising that James Lee Burke's anger is not louder, stronger, more violent even in this book.
That Burke is appalled and disgusted by the negligence, corruption and incompentence of city, state and federal authorities is evident in every chapter of this book. But his anger is understated and quiet, the sort of anger that children recognise from their parents as a sign that they are really in trouble this time. There are few references to any particular politician. President Bush, at one stage, is called the "shrubster" in a conversation that does not reflect well on the leader of the free world, and there is a scene in which Air Force One flies low over New Orleans and someone remarks sarcastically on how much better it makes them feel to know that the President is on the case
But the criticism and the anger is alrgely quiet, and more seething and more deadly for that.
The Tin Roof Blowdown opens with Katrina looming large, and quickly moves on to the relief that the storm seems to have passed - downgraded to a category 3 hurricane - without the cataclysmic damage that had been feared.
And perhaps if the government had kept those levees in the condition they needed to be in, the story would have ended there. But, of course the story did not end there and as the dam broke and water flooded in, the New Orleans Superdome and the neary Convention Centre became the epicentre of the global media for about 72 hours and the US, and its leaders were humiliated before the world, as its people - largely black, largely poor - paid the highest price for administrative complacency.
As the disastrous situation becomes clear, Dave Robicheaux is dispatched from his nearby home town on New Iberia to assist what remains of the NOPD to keep peace in the City - or at the very least, to restrict the growing war. What he finds appalls him, and the only reference point he has as a comparator is his experience in Vietnam. Burke's prose here is as purple as it ever was. His descriptions of the apocalyptic scenes are vivid and emotional, full of compassion and power.
But Burke is neither polemicist nor reporter, but rather a crime novelist and so out of the floods he creates a gripping thriller from the carnage as the wealthy white world and the criminal black world collide in the chaos with catastrophic results for all.
And so we find Otis Baylor, a successful insurance executive, holed up in his residence, feeling smug about how his generator will continue to give him air and light while his neighbours go without, and still seething about the rape of his teenager daughter at the hands of some black thugs some time earlier.
At the other end of the social scale, small time gangsters Bertrand and Eddy Melancon and Andre and Kevin Rochon, view the breakdown of law and order as a business opportunity: a chance to venture out into the unprotected world of the haves and engage in some serious redistribution of wealth.
The four young men break into an abandoned house on Baylor's street, ripping cocaine, weapons and huge wads of dollars bills out of the walls and ceilings that turn out to belong to dangerous gangland boss Sidney Kovick. They also remove a bag of blood diamonds, the pursuit of which, by various people you would not like to darken your doorstep, becomes the theme of the second half of the book.
As the four young men leave Kovick's residence, their boat runs out of fuel. They turn to the one source of obvious power in the street: Otis Baylor's generator. As they approach his house, however, one of them is recognised by his daughter as one of her assailants. In the ensuing melee, two of the men are shot, one fatally.
What happens from here is quintessential Burke as several storylines jostle for space in an increasingly involved narrative. Otis Baylor fights to clear his name as his life disintegrates before his eyes. Bertrand Melancon tries to come to terms with his own crimes and misdemeanours, and even enlists Dave Robicheaux's help as the subject on whom he unburdens his soul. Clete Purcel attempts to come to terms with the destruction of New Orleans in his own destructive way. And as Dave Robicheaux tries to hold everything together his family becomes the subject of the unwanted attentions of a psychopath with a strange-looking head.
While the Katrina angle gives The Tin Roof Blowdown a different focus from the usual Robicheaux outing (this is the 16th in the series) in every other way this is vintage Burke: a great plot, extraordinary characterisation, a closer-than-comfortable analysis of the blurred line that separates good from evil and all the atmopshere we have come to expect from the smell, sights and sounds of the Bayou Teche.