From Booklist
Edgar Award-winning Smith writes two mystery series set in the New Orleans era starring female sleuths, Talba Wallis and Skip Langdon, respectively. Her latest in the Wallis series takes on the dog-eat-dog world of New Orleans society as it wraps itself around the southern literary scene. A call from Wallis' half sister, Janessa (whom Wallis discovered in a previous mystery), catapults the multitalented PI, computer expert, and poet into a double-homicide investigation. A mother and daughter are found murdered in their stately home: the mother is floating in the swimming pool, a bullet in her head; the daughter has died from multiple stab wounds. The mother is known as a modern-day female Gatsby. She came from nowhere, hosted elaborate parties, and now has ended up dead in her pool. Driving Wallis' interest in the case is the fact that her sister, a painter of decorative murals at the house, is a prime suspect. Wallis ranges throughout the state in the course of her investigation, giving the reader great lashings of Louisiana atmosphere. Vibrant. Connie Fletcher
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Review
Vibrant.
Book Description
Allyson Brown, the Girl Gatsby, is 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. 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.
About the Author
In addition to the Talba Wallis series, Louisiana Hotshot and Louisiana Bigshot, Julie Smith is also the author of the Skip Langdon mystery series and the Rebecca Schwartz series. Her first Skip Langdon book, New Orleans Mourning, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel.
A former reporter, she lives in New Orleans most of the time.
Louisiana Lament FROM THE PUBLISHER
"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 canapes of carnage.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
African-American poet and PI Talba Wallis and her boss Eddie Valentino investigate a society-page murder that gets uglier by the minute in Edgar-winner Julie Smith's fast-paced Louisiana Lament, the third in the series (after 2002's Louisiana Bigshot). From biker bar to college campus, the chase is on, and readers will remain hooked until the killer's comeuppance in the clever conclusion. Agent, Vicky Vijur. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
New Orleans poet/p.i. Talba Wallis (Louisiana Bigshot, 2002, etc.) gets mired in a Great Gatsby plot. Talba's usually uncommunicative half-sister Janessa calls desperate for help. She's found Allyson Brown, her employer, floating in the pool of her Garden District mansion, her brow furrowed by a bullet. In the worst English this side of a rap song, she swears she didn't do it, and that Allyson's pet poet Rashad, who lived free of charge on the property, didn't either. But where is he? And before he took off, did he pause to stab Allyson's sweetie-pie daughter Cassie to death too? Talba, setting out to find Rashad, Allyson's equally missing son Austin, and anything resembling a motive for murder, meets all the counterparts to Gatsby's story along the way. There are married men with extramarital itches, their abused spouses, best friends who fall out, a couple of patsies, and the usual flotsam that freeloaded off Allyson, the social climber and con artist called "the girl Gatsby" by everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line. Talba's shamus boss Eddie Valentino and his sexy lawyer daughter Angie reconnoiter biker bars, ask favors of the cops, and spar with each other while Talba concentrates on bad writing: her own, Rashad's, and that of two others, leading to an outlandish confrontation in a college classroom. F. Scott Fitzgerald, as you might suspect, handled the plot better, and Talba, her wardrobe, and her poetry have all seen better days.
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