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NEW ORLEANS NOIR

Name: NEW ORLEANS NOIR
Author: Julie Smith
ISBN: 978-1-61775-384-8

THE CLASSICS

edited by Julie Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016

All this misery makes for a bleak read, and readers looking for a typical noir experience had better fortify themselves.

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Smith, who edited Akashic’s original New Orleans Noir (2007), goes back for a second trip to the Big Easy.

It’s not clear what makes all of Smith’s 18 picks classics. For some it’s age: Armand Lanusse’s “A Marriage of Conscience” dates from 1843. For others, it’s clearly bloodlines: O. Henry’s “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking” and Eudora Welty’s “The Purple Hat” come from authors whose literary pedigrees are formidable. But many, like Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s “Pie Man,” are post-Katrina offerings. What they have in common is a focus not on crime but on human misery. In some, like Ruffin’s story and James Lee Burke’s “Jesus Out to Sea,” the misery is foisted on humans by nature. There’s the misery of war, in Shirley Ann Grau’s “Miss Yellow Eyes,” and the misery of poverty, in Tom Dent’s “Ritual Murder.” Politics brings its own brand of misery in Poppy Z. Brite’s “Mussolini and the Axeman’s Jazz.” There’s the misery of unrequited love in Valerie Martin’s “Spats,” Nevada Barr’s “GDMFSOB,” and Ace Atkins’ “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” and the misery of hopeless love in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Tennessee Williams’ “Desire and the Black Masseur.” Children provide their share of misery in John William Corrington’s “Pleadings” and Ellen Gilchrist’s “Rich.” But perhaps the deepest misery of all is the desperation so unfathomable that it can be shared with no one, as in Grace King’s “The Little Convent Girl.”

All this misery makes for a bleak read, and readers looking for a typical noir experience had better fortify themselves.

Pub Date: March 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61775-384-8

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Akashic

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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LOUISIANA LAMENT
by Julie Smith

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MEAN WOMAN BLUES
by Julie Smith

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LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
by Julie Smith

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE AND BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

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BADLANDS

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

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Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.