Death Before Facebook (Skip Langdon #4) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Death Before Facebook (Skip Langdon #4) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

Online was always a dangerous place--even in 1994, when Mark Zuckerberg was ten and this book was first published. But who knew? The Internet was the fresh new face in town. Twenty-year-old Geoff Kavanagh should never have posted about seeing his father murdered…because way too many people in his online community, the TOWN, knew things about his family he didn’t even suspect. Secret after secret start to unravel after Geoff’s oddly untimely death, thanks to New Orleans Detective Skip Langdon, who finds Geoff’s gorgeous mom suspiciously uninterested in her son’s mysterious fatal fall. But she’s apparently the only one. Seemingly all the TOWNSpeople have theories—and ambition as cyberdetectives. Quite a dangerous situation for the murderer. Calling the windup “a virtuoso spin on Rashomon,” Kirkus said, “Smith worms her way deeply and painfully into her cast's layers and layers of past relations, getting deeper than ever into Skip as well.”
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The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series)

The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

What better place for a serial killer to operate than the Twelve-Step Programs, where “anonymous” is a way of life? To catch the Twelve-Step killer who calls himself the Axeman, New Orleans police detective Skip Langdon hangs in the meetings themselves—AA, Codependents Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous—for some pretty funny scenes. But then things get rough—the Axeman accelerates his murder cycle. This is the second in this beloved police procedural series, one of the first to usher in the era of the not-so-perfect female sleuth. Skip, with her insecurities and weight worries, is the real treasure here, a testament to the notion that a really great cop can also be a lot like the rest of us. A great mystery for fans of female detectives, hard-boiled, even cozy. The first in the series, New Orleans Mourning, won the Edgar for Best Novel.
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P.I. On A Hot Tin Roof

P.I. On A Hot Tin Roof

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

When PI Talba Wallis gets a frantic phone call from Orleans Parish Prison, the last person she expects to hear from is her boss's lawyer daughter, Angie. Popped for drug possession, Angie insists the drugs were planted. She's a target for representing a neighborhood group protesting the illegal commercial use of a marina by its owner, Judge Buddy Champagne. According to Angie, the judge is dirty---and he's the one who had her set up.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?
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The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series)

The Kindness of Strangers (Skip Langdon Mystery #6) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

Politics makes the strangest bedfellows of all and in New Orleans, a psychopath’s running for mayor. Not just the usual harmless megalomaniac—a murderer and a monster. His supporters and a good proportion of would-be voters think he’s just a kindly preacher-man and handily crucify anyone who says different. Enter Detective Skip Langdon, who met the Rev. Errol Jacomine on a case, finds him pretty much the personification of evil, and can point to a pile of corpses to prove it. But Langdon’s fresh out of street cred. On administrative leave after shooting someone, she’s become the Cassandra of the police department—everything she says gets put down to paranoia. So finding the proof to discredit Jacomine becomes her obsession until he kidnaps a couple of kids she cares about—and then it turns into a mission from hell.
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Louisiana Hotshot

Louisiana Hotshot

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

The FIRST mystery in the Talba Wallis series. “Wanted: Hotshot P.I. with super-human skills.” Confirmed grump Eddie Valentino placed the ad. Hotshot twenty-something Talba Wallis knew exactly how to answer it. And thus was born the dynamic duo of New Orleans private detection, one cynical, sixty-five-year-old Luddite white dude with street smarts, and one young, bright-eyed, Twenty-First century African-American female poet, performance artist, mistress of disguise, and computer jock extraordinaire. In Louisiana Hotshot, their job is to hunt down a sociopath and pedophile who’s molested the fourteen-year-old daughter of their client, hangs out in the sordid byways of the rap and recording industries, and has more powerful allies than a Cabinet member. In her personal life, Talba faces another mystery, one so frightening no one will help her investigate. But she knows she won’t sleep till she solves it—and the truth will change her forever.
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Huckleberry Fiend

Huckleberry Fiend

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

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.
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Louisiana Lament

Louisiana Lament

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

Allyson Brown--the Girl Gatsby, they called her. A woman of wealth, hostess of fabled parties, patron of the arts, especially of poets. Found floating in her own swimming pool, shot to death.Poet and fledgling detective Talba Wallis gets an urgent call from the sister she barely knows, Janessa. The Girl Gatsby was Janessa's 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 perpetually irascible boss, Eddie, find the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson Brown was widely hated, a con artist who neglected her children, failed to pay her bills, and lied to everyone. 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.
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Louisiana Bigshot

Louisiana Bigshot

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

By night the glamorous Baroness de Pontalba, by day New Orleans's hippest PI, 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. And the man who should be Talba's new worst enemy becomes her new best client.As Talba and her curmudgeonly boss, Eddie Valentino, thread their way backward through Babalu's short, difficult life, they find an intricate pattern of violence and fear and a shadowy Mr. Big with homicidal intent. Talba butts right into everybodys 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.But Talba's poetic soul (as the Baroness, she's a poet and performance artist), impeccable computer skills, facility with high-tech equipment, and willingness to bend the law get her through in fine style, along with a little help from Eddie, her sweetheart Darryl Boucree, and her sharp-tongued mama, Miz Clara.
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Jazz Funeral (Skip Langdon #3) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Jazz Funeral (Skip Langdon #3) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

Smack in the middle of the summer, detective Skip Langdon finds herself investigating the murder of the universally beloved producer of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Then the victim's sixteen-year-old sister disappears, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn't f the murderer, she's in mortal danger from the person who is., Skip trails an elusive killer through the delirium of a city caught up in JazzFest, the world's most famous music bash. This is the third book in the Skip Langdon mystery series.
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Crescent City Connection (Skip Langdon Mystery #7) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Crescent City Connection (Skip Langdon Mystery #7) (The Skip Langdon Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

The Jury’s a vigilante organization out to get the bad guys “who escaped prosecution” on an ambitious national scale. But there’s a Crescent City connection. Sure, New Orleans is known for corruption, but suddenly the good guys get a break—an honest police chief. And then someone guns him down. When The Jury takes out the chief’s killer, Detective Skip Langdon’s on the case. But no one cares! After all, the guy was a cop-killer. Skip cares really a lot—because she’s pretty sure The Jury’s the brainchild of her old nemesis Errol Jacomine, self-styled compassionate preacher but suspected psychopath. As an added complication, Jacomine’s sent his crazy son Daniel to kidnap his own daughter, Jacomine’s granddaughter Lovelace, who escapes and runs to her Uncle Isaac in New Orleans. An outsider artist and major oddball, Isaac’s taken a vow of silence. Still, uncle and niece manage to communicate, forming a sinewy bond that could save—or endanger--both their lives. And Langdon comes up with a plan so clever even the FBI can’t shout her down.
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True-Life Adventure

True-Life Adventure

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

“A Prize Plot.” -San Francisco Examiner “A bright, light, cleverly written tale.” -Cincinnati Post Things were going lousy for ex-reporter Paul Mcdonald: No money, no girl friend, no bright new career as a mystery novelist … and then along came PI Jack Birnbaum with an offer. He’d detect, and Paul would write the client reports. It wasn’t much, but it would keep Spot the cat in Kitty Queen tidbits. And then this: “That stuff’ll kill you.” “What? Your coffee?” Jack was just doctoring his second cup. “No. All that sweetener. You’re poisoning yourself.” “We’ve all gotta go sometime.” Jack went right about then. His eyes rolled back and he let go of the cup. Coffee sloshed all over my rug. His big body fell forward in the chair. A day that begins with a body in your living room really ought to get better, but next comes burglary and after that, assault-by-cop. And Paul’s got a feeling that’s just the beginning. There must have been something someone didn't want him to know in one of those client reports. But what? These were the facts: I was thirty-eight. I’d spent fifteen years on one major metropolitan daily or another. I’d written six unpublished detective novels. Unpublished in spite of my name. John D. MacDonald did it daily. Ross Macdonald did it deeper. Gregory Mcdonald did it with dash. Wrote thrillers and got them published. But not Paul Mcdonald. I just wrote them, supporting my habit with clients like Jack. I had about two hundred bucks to last me the rest of my life. My only client was dead. The market for mysteries was terrible. I didn’t get out enough. The only thing I’d ever done successfully was write newspaper stories. And I was sitting on a great story. A story he can sell, if he can catch the murderer before the murderer catches him. Birnbaum's last report concerned a kidnapped child, so Paul begins there. The trail leads him to the laboratory of a Nobel laureate geneticist, and then to City Hall, where an extremely nasty surprise awaits. But there’s an upside—lovely witness Sardis Kincannon. Nothing like falling in love while you’re running for your life! “One more blithe San Fran outing with a likeable journalist-sleuth by the name of Paul Mcdonald … Smith improves with each story and this is her best to date.” -Kirkus Reviews The San Francisco Bay Area shines here, as does the author's wit and humor. Fans of CASTLE, MURDER SHE WROTE, even ELLERY QUEEN will enjoy this fast-paced and funny take on the mystery-writer-as-detective.
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Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

Julie Smith

Paranormal / Vampires / Fantasy

For San Francisco lawyer Rebecca Schwartz, it should have been a restful weekend in Monterey with her friend Marty Whitehead—but Marty’s boss at the Monterey Aquarium is dead in the kelp tank and Marty’s a guest of the county. So what’s the etiquette when your hostess is arrested for murder? In Rebecca’s case, that’s easy—sign on as her lawyer, try to keep Marty’s kids out of the deep end, and somehow avoid drowning in the sea of lies gushing from her client’s mouth. The sea and all its animals are Rebecca’s first love, but when her attention turns to a particularly fine specimen of homo sapiens, marine biologist Julio Soto, her task becomes to keep Julio from sleeping with the fishes he collects. Because if she doesn’t act fast, he could be next in line for the shark tank—along with Rebecca herself.
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