New Orleans Noir (Akashic Noir)
from Akashic Books
Brand-new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Ace Atkins, Patty Friedmann, David Fulmer, Barbara Hambly, Greg Herren, Laura Lippman, Tim McLoughlin, James Nolan, Ted O'Brien, Eric Overmyer, Jeri Cain Rossi, Maureen Tan, Jervey Tervalon, Olympia Vernon, Christine Wiltz, Kalamu Ya Salaam, and Julie Smith.
Julie Smith is the author of two detective series set in New Orleans and an Edgar Award winner. A former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle, she lives in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans, which is much funkier than it sounds.
Louisiana Bigshot: A Talba Wallis Novel (Talba Wallis)
by Julie Smith
from Tor Books
Talba Wallis, hip and happening PI, a.k.a. the Baroness Pontalba, star of the New Orleans avant garde, was first introduced in Louisiana Hotshot and returns in this deft, well-written mystery about Babalu Maya, a "healer" who wants to know if her boyfriend is cheating on her. Shortly after Talba confirms her client's suspicions, Babalu dies of a heroin overdose the police are certain is a suicide. But both Talba and Jason, Babalu's contrite and confused boyfriend, find it such an improbable scenario that he hires Talba to find out what really happened. Unraveling the mystery takes the sassy sleuth with the attitude that's bigger than she is to the small Louisiana town where Babalu was born and to the prominent, influential family that turned its back on her a long time ago. While the plot isn't much more than a routine Southern gothic, the heroine is: Talba Wallis is a lively, engaging protagonist with family secrets of her own that are revealed in a secondary plot that's much more interesting than the primary one. Smith, the author of three other series, has a real winner in this one. --Jane Adams
By night the glamorous Baroness de Pontalba, by day New Orleans’ hippest P.I., Talba Wallis is dumbfounded when she can’t do a simple background check on an old friend—Babalu Maya just doesn’t seem to exist on paper. Four days later, she doesn’t exist at all.
As Talba threads her way backward through Babalu’s short, difficult life, she finds an intricate pattern of violence and fear, and a shadowy Mr. Big with homicidal intent. Talba butts right into everybody’s business in Clayton, Louisiana, a small town with a big, ugly secret, where being black, mouthy, and smart are the three qualities most likely to get her killed. As she uncovers dark truths, events and people spiral into nasty motion in a story that has more twists and turns than the Mississippi River.
Louisiana Lament: A Talba Wallis Novel (Talba Wallis)
by Julie Smith
from Forge Books
Poet and fledgling detective Talba Wallis gets an urgent call from the sister she barely knows: Janessa. To Girl Gatsby Janessa is close friend. But this call isn't an invitation to an elegant literary salon. Janessa wants off the hook as the principal murder suspect.
Investigating, Talba and her irascible boss, Eddie, find the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson was widely hated, a con artist who neglected her children, failed to pay her bills, and lied to everyone she wanted something from. The one person she loved may have ushered her to her death.
The case takes Talba and Eddie from literary parties to Gulf Coast bait shops, from biker bars to abandoned wharves, and finally, to the story of another Gatsby, which may yield answers, or greater mysteries.
Louisiana Lament is Talba's journey through the not-so-genteel Southern literary scene, where backbiting and petty jealousies abound, and mint juleps are served with canapés of carnage.
P.I. on a Hot Tin Roof: A Talba Wallis Novel (Talba Wallis)
by Julie Smith
from Forge Books
Talba and her boss, Eddie, are outraged---knowing Angie as they do, they pull out all the stops for her. And when Talba goes undercover as a housekeeper for Judge Champagne, she finds a household straight out of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with the judge playing Big Daddy. The weak son and the hot daughter-in-law are in residence, being "between jobs." Big Mama's absent, though---she died some time ago, and the judge is now adding his fiancée to the mix. That would be Miss Kristin LaGarde, an impossibly lovely, and possibly innocent, young lady who seems hopelessly in love with the old coot.
Talba dredges up lots of interesting material; such as that someone was accidentally electrocuted at the marina and that the judge is in bed with certain bail bondsmen. She finds evidence of bribes and kickbacks. He's dirty all right.
When the story breaks and the scandal deepens, Judge Champagne winds up dead. And, to her surprise, Talba is asked to investigate. Did politics kill the judge? Or was it his own family?
Louisiana Hotshot: A Talba Wallis Novel (Talba Wallis)
by Julie Smith
from Tor Books
Talba Wallis, the smart, sassy, African American computer whiz who's also a gifted poet and artist, made her debut in Smith's last Skip Langdon mystery, 82 Desire--along with her alter ego, the Baroness de Pontalba. Here she's back in a story of her own, holding court at a hip café by night (and keeping her audience entertained with the rap story of how her mother named her Urethra) while embarking by day on a new career as a detective under the cynical aegis of Eddie Valentino, an old PI who's never encountered anyone quite like her before.
But Eddie's got problems of his own, so he turns Talba loose investigating the possible molestation of a young black teenager and the disappearance of a couple of her friends. There's something about the violent trail she's following on this, her first case, that's stirring up Talba's own memories of her long-gone father, about whom neither Miz Clara, Talba's tough and crusty mama, nor her yuppie brother the doctor will utter a word. Set in New Orleans, territory Smith knows well, this is a lively mystery with a vivid, outrageous, and wholly likable new heroine whose appearance will be welcomed by fans of the writer's Skip Langdon series. --Jane Adams
Meet the snazziest P.I. in the land. Not by accident does she roam America's jazziest city, New Orleans. By day she is Talba Wallis: smart, sassy, ebony, and a fledgling detective. By night she is the Baroness Pontalba: poet laureate of the city's smoky rooms, matron saint of her town's exotic and multi-colorful café society.
Goaded into a day gig by her pushy mom, she finds herself employed by Eddie Valentino, and Talba is plunged into a world of fame, money, and power run amok, hunting a man who seduces teenage black girls and may be making them disappear. At the same time she is haunted by disturbing near-memories. Her forgotten past only emerges when violence enters her life-but not, she learns, for the first time.
New Orleans Beat (Skip Langdon Novels)
by Julie Smith
from Fawcett
"ABSORBING...ENTERTAINING...Smith not only gives us the lowdown on the Big Easy but also take us into the often weird world of computer bulletin boards....NEW ORLEANS BEAT is reader-friendly from log-on to log-off."
--The Orlando Sentinel
An unclassified death on the coroner's daily record is nothing special: a healthy young man found dead after an apparent fall from a ladder. Yet in a neglected old house set inside a jungle of greenery, Detective Skip Langdon listens to an unusually listless mother talk about her son's death and his empty life...and wonders. It seems the shy thirty-one-year-old victim, Geoff Kavanagh, was a computer genius who often frequented the TOWN, a computer network of some 10,000 faceless voices. Within this extraordinary community, strangers achieve an odd type of intimacy, sharing the darkest of secrets.
Skip learns that Geoff confessed his own deep secret: he saw his father murdered. Now the TOWN believes Geoff, too, was murdered--and Skip must follow the electronic trail of a killer....
"[A] SUSPENSEFUL MYSTERY...Smith is a skilled writer who can evoke the steamy, mysterious ambiance of New Orleans."
--Booklist
House of Blues (Skip Langdon Novels)
by Julie Smith
from Fawcett
"ONE OF THE BEST OF THE SKIP LANGDON SERIES. . . In the fast-growing field of fictional female police officers, New Orleans Homicide Detective Skip Langdon stands tall."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch
After prominent New Orleans restaurateur Arthur Hebert is murdered in his beautiful Garden District home, three family members suspiciously vanish: Hebert's daughter, who was soon to have taken over the management of his restaurant, his ex-addict son-in-law, and his small granddaughter--all missing without a trace. A kidnapping gone wrong? Homicide Detective Skip Langdon thinks it's possible, but why should the kidnappers have taken three hostages when one would have been enough?
Skip's hunt for a murderer and the missing Hebert heirs embraces worlds within worlds--the elegant, dangerous Garden District, the French Quarter, the seedy Treme, broken-down projects, exclusive mansions, and lowdown bars. It takes her into places where the city's dirty business is transacted, and those where life is mostly madness, sadness, and badness. It may even take Skip to her death. . . .
"SMITH BRINGS THE CITY STRIKINGLY ALIVE."
--The Boston Sunday Globe
New Orleans Mourning (Skip Langdon Novels)
by Julie Smith
from Fawcett
It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and after spending most of his life trying to reach high society, Chauncy St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a party-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Skip Langdon, a rookie police officer and former debutante turned cynic of the uptown crowd, is assigned to the case. Scouring the streets for clues, interviewing revelers and street people with names like Jo Jo, Hinky and Cookie, and using her white glove contacts, the post-deb rebel cop comes up with a motive for murder that surprises even herself. New Orleans Mourning won the 1991 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.
When the smiling King of Carnival is killed at Mardi Gras, policewoman Skip Langdon is on the case. She knows the upper-crust family of the victim and that it hides more than its share of glittering skeletons. But nothing could prepare her for the tangled web of clues and ancient secrets that would mean danger for her--and doom for the St. Amants....
"Smith is a gifted writer."
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
Mean Woman Blues (Skip Langdon) (Talba Wallis)
by Julie Smith
from Forge Books
Nemesis: the rival fate never allows you to beat.
The nemesis of Skip Langdon, New Orleans police detective, is Errol Jacomine. This evangelical preacher has been leader of his own frenzied army of converts, has run for mayor of New Orleans, and now wants to become president of the United States. His campaign methods are rabble-rousing, theft, kidnapping, and multiple murder.
Skip thinks he's as dangerous as Jim Jones. She has chased him for years, no luck. Now Jacomine comes after Skip, her lover, and her friends. She must track him down. But his guise this time is so clever even his own children don't recognize him.
In Mean Woman Blues, Edgar Award-winner Julie Smith returns triumphantly to her popular series about hip New Orleans detective Skip Langdon, once again operating in sensual, sexy, exotic New Orleans.
This time Skip is able to teach Jacomine that nemesis originally meant the goddess of retributive justice.
Crescent City Kill (Skip Langdon Novels)
by Julie Smith
from Ivy Books
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, clandestine group lies the evil brilliance of her old adversary, charismatic con man and cold-blooded killer Errol Jacomine. She's been waiting for Jacomine to orchestrate his twisted plan for revenge. The time is now. . . .
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