82 Desire

Julie Smith

1/25/2004

Councilwoman Bebe Fortier reports to the New Orleans police that her husband has been missing since they were at the airport a day or so earlier. He left her at baggage claim while he went to get their car. He has not been seen since. Skip Langdon, now working at the precinct that encludes the Fortier's neighborhood, is assigned the case along with Detective Abasolo.

There doesn't appear to be any reason for Russell Fortier to decide to disappear on his own, so they are suspecting the worst. Langdon questions the family, friends, and co-workers at Union Oil. Fortier is a respected executive at his company and in line for promotion.

Talbis Wallis is a computer nerd/genius who has quit her job to write poetry. She decides to hire a private detective to help find a mystery person from her childhood. Instead, she agrees to work for Allred at Union Oil as a temp helping install computers. Her undercover job is to find and copy some computer files. She does and returns them to Allred. Shortly after, Allred is killed in his office and the office is ransacked. When she returns to the office to find the files herself, the files have disappeared.

To complicate matters, an anonymous tipster is calling Langdon, Wallis, Jane Storey the newspaper reporter, and Langdon's friend Cindy Lou Wooten with enough tantalizing information they end up coming together at a poetry reading. Langdon begins to realize that the different small mysteries may tie in together, and she starts digging deeper.

This is an interesting mystery. 82 Desire is more of a suspense than a murder mystery, but still a detective novel. It's easy reading that keeps the reader's attention. You have to feel sorry for Wallis' true name, and can understand her obsession with the mystery man in her past. 82 Desire is a novel that highlights normal human failings and emotions, with some more sinister motives lurking in the background of one character. While Langdon's personal story is best followed through the series, this one can stand easily on its own.

You can find more about this book at .

New Orleans Mourning
The Axeman's Jazz
Jazz Funeral
New Orleans Beat
House of Blues
Kindness of Strangers
Crescent City Kill
82 Desire
Mean Woman Blues