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 FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
Allyson Brown&mdash-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.
