His prose is as evocative as always although, faced with real horrors, less lyrical and lush.

There is a touch of didacticism and this is certainly an angry novel, but it is also thoughtful, sensitive and, as so often with Burke, elegiac. On the whole, his approach is measured (apart from bits of Bush- and Fox News-bashing, which sit oddly) and he merges his almost journalistic account of the aftermath of Katrina seamlessly with a powerful crime plot. What shows his greatness as a writer and his mastery of the genre is that, although his anger at what happened is evident, he doesn't allow it to overwhelm the story. Given Burke's passion for Louisiana, this novel could have gone horribly wrong and turned into a rant. In this apocalyptic setting, good and evil collide and Robicheaux sees both the worst and the best in people. Corpses bob in the filthy water or are skewered on the branches of trees. Burke shows the plight of the poor with moving immediacy. Robicheaux's search takes him through a world where there is no refuge for the helpless or the innocent and where predators terrorise the flooded streets.

There are also diamonds to be tracked down and a sadistic psychopath on the loose. At the same time, he's trying to work out what has happened to the drug-addicted priest, who disappeared in the Ninth Ward while trying to rescue his congregation. One of them is still alive and Robicheaux must find him before the vengeful mobster does. The looters, who are black men, are shot in a wealthy suburb because they make the mistake of robbing the home of a major mobster. Robicheaux, who has a problem keeping a handle on his anger at the best of times, is outraged by the venality, criminality and incompetence that he must wade through as he searches the flooded city for two looters and a junkie priest. It's the 16th book to feature Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux and it starts with the destruction of New Orleans and the lawless chaos that followed.

The tin roof blowdown