From the 1991 Edgar Award-winning author of New Orleans Mourning comes a witty mystery featuring writer/sleuth Paul McDonald. When his burglar friend Booker "happens" on part of Mark Twain's original manuscript of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he wants Paul to help find its rightful owner.
Julie Smith has another winner with Tourist Trap. Rebecca Schwartz is a San Francisco lawyer who ends up defending a man accused of a series of fatal incidents by someone named The Trapper. She works in tandem with her boyfriend Rob, a writer for a local paper, and together they see the first mur...
I was drawn to this mystery by its setting (New Orleans) and its provocative title. It was interesting as a bit of a period piece: set in 1994, we are in a world that still used floppy disks, and where interacting via online bulletin board communities was perceived as a fascinating and intriguing...
A feminist lawyer must solve a murder whodunit in Julie Smith's Death Turns a Trick (read an excerpt of the book here).Rebecca Schwartz is a well-bred lawyer in the San Francisco Bay area who tends to bore easily. That boredom leads her to a whorehouse where she is playing the piano for a party w...
Julie Smith is becoming one of my all-time favorite mystery writers. Set in New Orleans and centered on the activity of Private Investigator Talba Wallis, AKA The Duchess de Pontalba (nom de plume she took from the historical New Orleans Baroness), this book follows the downfall of a corrupt jud...
RATING: 3.5There are certain things that you can count on—death, taxes and that the Formosan termites will return to New Orleans every May to feast on that city's structures. And in Homicide Detective Skip Langford's life, there's one other given—that her enemy and nemesis, Errol Jacomine, oh so...
RATING: 3.75Talba Wallis is a person of striking dualities. On the one hand, she's a well-respected voice of the African-American woman who shares her life's experiences through her poetry. On the other, she's a novice private investigator who is working for an older Italian man by the name of ...
Ah, New Orleans. The drug that is the heat and scents, the music and moans, life and death and destiny. The heart of a world both magical and profane. Where “church ladies” still wear hats and movements in the dark often presage the advent of violence and death.Julie Smith knows New Orleans. She ...
Councilwoman Bebe Fortier has misplaced her equally prominent husband. Across town, part-time detective-poet Talba Wallis has a simple wish--to find out what Russell Fortier's disappearance has to do with her. But the private investigator who hired Talba to spy on Fortier can't help her out. He's...
Who or what is The Jury? To her horror, NOPD detective Skip Langdon discovers it is a new, national, fast-growing, and very volatile organization headquartered in New Orleans. Its mission: to execute those who have "escaped" prosecution. What's more, Skip perceives that behind this deadly, clande...
The Edgar-winning series of New Orleans mysteries starring Skip Langdon continues. After prominenet New Orleans restauranteur Arthur Hebert is murdered, three family members suspiciously vanish. Skip's hunt for a killer and the missing Hebert heirs embraces worlds within worlds. HC: Fawcett.
The two-foot-tall statue was at the far corner of the house, near where the front yard met the side yard. It was sheltered by a stone grotto that Sonny had built and surrounded by a garden that his wife, Tam, had planted. Climbing red roses framed the grotto and tiny white flowers formed a carpet...
MARGRIIIIIIT!” Only one person called her Margaret and only one person stood outside her door and yelled as loud as he pleased. She answered the door in a towel, having just stepped from the shower. “Oh me-oh my-oh,” said her guest. “It’s Venus of de bayou.” “As a matter of fact, Dee-Dee, it’s th...