House of Blues

Julie Smith

Arthur Herbert is shot during a family get together on Monday evening. The CEO of the family-owned Herbert's restaurant is having his weekly night off with his family. They are celebrating the newest restaurant that will be opening in the new casino coming to the river by New Orleans. His granddaughter has an accident and her clothes have been covered in spilled beans. Sugar, his wife, runs over to their daughter's house to get Sally a new outfit. When she returns, Arthur is dead. Her daughter Reed, son-in-law Dennis, and Sally are gone. What happened during that half hour?

Skip Langdon is the homicide detective to take the Herbert case. She starts looking for the missing family, hoping they are alive. Dennis has supposedly been sighted trying to score some heroin. In trying to hunt him down, Skip finds herself involved with a local drug dealer, Delavon. She also comes across one of her oldest friends, Tricia. Tricia also has a history of drug abuse and appears to have returned to it.

Somehow Skip has to locate Dennis, Reed, and Sally. She works in dangerous grounds, the areas of New Orleans where drugs and gangs are rampant. This story also has ties to the New Orleans Mob-types, the snob-types, and the casinos.

This book is a quick, easy read. Yet Smith makes the aura of New Orleans vivid to the reader. Skip Langdon is a complex character which shows in the shorter novels like this as well as the longer ones of this series. Her personal life is intertwined in the story, but doesn't overtake the murder mystery. This is an enjoyable book.

Notice: Non-graphic violence, Strong sexual content

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Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr