Burkes mystery takes place at the same time as Katrina and he does describe horrible events that went on there in the context of his book so we see people fighting over scarce resources and bodies floating in the waters and rescuers saving people etc and I have no real beef with his limited description of the catastrophe as it is part of the setting of the book, but its his mystery that I find faulty. I really think the book is overlong and the plot convoluted, unconvincing and generally full of unsympathetic people.

Basically three looters who are past rapists and a brother of one loot the home of a crook find diamonds but in the course of their leaving get shot by someone from a neighboring house. The innocent boy is killed and one of the rapists is paralyzed. The robbed crook tries to find the looters while a diabolical psyopath seeks to recover the diamonds. Robicheaux investigates the shooting of the innocent boy and gets ensnared in the search by the crooks and the psychopath to find the diamonds and the looters. Naturally the psycho goes after Robicheaux's daughter. The story takes way too long to get anywhere and (part of that is because Burke is trying to show that justice and all services grounded to a halt when New Orleans was destroyed but there are too many loose ends and the denouement takes too long to get there.

Burke's description of the destruction of New Orleans is convincing, but he needed a better plot.