New Orleans Crime Fiction Rises Again, as Julie Smith Returns to Skip Langdon Series

Author Julie Smith's website says it's been 12 years since she last released a Skip Langdon crime novel. The series just came back to life, with MURDER ON MAGAZINE, released as an almost-self-published paperback and ebook via http://www.booksbnimble.com.

MURDER ON MAGAZINE picks up in New Orleans, putting Skip back onto her old familiar beat -- but with a very modern twist: the killing she's investigating took place via an "AirBnBad" short-term rental, and it's quickly clear that not only is the trend for these rentals ruining residential areas of the city; it's making it way, way too easy for pimps and prostitutes to operate under false ID in those spare-cash bedrooms.

Told from two viewpoints -- Skip's, and that of Cody, a half-child victim of sex trafficking who may also be a killer -- the action is quick and intense. After all, valuable prostitutes aren't readily released by the people who've "owned" them, and Cody's quick and cute but with those pink tips to her hair, sort of memorable; the hard-core criminals know how and where to find her. Of more concern, so might her last client, the "Whale." But with some tech support, Skip too is a force to reckon with. And Julie Smith allows time to get inside Skip's mind, as well as her dog-loving heart:

First Miguel's death and Lloyd's arrest, then, barely a day later, during her nice January "barbecue," Abasolo's phone call. Sometimes it seemed like one step backward for every step forward. The Whale was on the move.

Skip couldn't believe what she was looking at. Or rather, she didn't want to. She didn't even want to be a cop today. She wanted to walk time back and arrange to be out of the country so she wouldn't have to see this. Because it was ugly and terrifying and heralded so many more bad things she felt her throat close and nausea roil her stomach. ... It was obvious to both of them: the wannabe serial killer who'd first attacked the dog and then the pink-haired girl -- and probably killed Benjamin Solo -- had now achieved his goal. He'd embarked on a killing spree that wasn't going to stop until they got him.

If you've been longing for a new book from this seasoned New Orleans writer, here's a chance to get back to Skip Langdon -- and if you've never happened to read Smith's mysteries, well, as of the moment of writing this, two Skip Langdon stories were on the author's website as a free ebook. What a chance! Have fun, and enjoy the nostalgia.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Hard-Boiled Crime from Bill Loehfelm: LET THE DEVIL OUT

When another reviewer's comments made me itch to read LET THE DEVIL OUT by Bill Loehfelm, I realized it was the fourth in the series featuring Maureen Coughlin, and I hadn't read any yet ... in fact, somehow I missed even hearing about Bill Loehfelm. I'm glad I've caught up with his crime fiction, though, starting with the first in the series, The Devil She Knows.

Maureen Coughlin at this opening looks like she's already sliding downhill fast in life: waitressing in her second Staten Island bar, making poor choices, and stringing herself along by balancing her ups and downs with booze and cocaine. The apparent suicide of the bar owner arrives in parallel with invasive and terrifying threats to Maureen herself, and soon she's sure she's been a witness to part of a criminal operation, embedded in city politics and of course money and power.

Making bad choices includes, in this case, trying to chase the head of the criminal operation herself. Maureen's effort to confront the face of evil puts her into far more danger; The Devil She Knows is downright scary to read, while at the same time almost impossible to put down. Those decisions are only a hair's distance from ones we've all considered at some point, and we're just better protected, less foolhardy, probably less brave than Maureen Coughlin.

When I plunged into this summer's release of LET THE DEVIL OUT, I'd skipped the second and third titles, The Devil in Her Way and Doing the Devil's Work, but Loehfelm brushes the important changes into the fourth book swiftly and effectively. Maureen's now an rookie officer with the New Orleans Police Department, carrying her wounds as impetus for a crime-solving career. She's "Coughlin" or OC, for Officer Coughlin, to most around her.

But at this point, Maureen Coughlin is also Seriously Messed Up. Tossed aside for six weeks of forced leave because of actions she'd taken against a crooked fellow cop, she's back to abusing drugs and has a new obsession: Let's call it a nasty form of vigilante action. "Instead of going home like she should have, she had restarted that night's mission." It made her feel alive, and in control, and more: an almost sexual sense of complete exhilaration. And she knows it's a terrible mistake.

So wise of you, Maureen. Every step of the way. You're letting him burn you down, she thought, from beyond the grave. After everything you did to get away from him.

How stupid can you be?

The death of a young woman Maureen's been trying to locate, the murderously disturbed Madison Leary, pulls Maureen back into official action. Looks like the Klan's form of evil has resurfaced in New Orleans with a group called The Watchmen, and soon Maureen makes herself a target. Her inner demons make it all extra dangerous. I was frankly appalled at how much risk she pulled toward herself, and how much anger and pain she carried ... but also recognized the situation as true enough to life.

What impresses me most in LET THE DEVIL OUT is Loehfelm's deft portrayal of what it costs to make a decision to change -- to exorcise the demons that drive us. Every move Maureen makes carries a price, and she is excruciatingly aware of that mathematics of pain. Loehfelm's laying out of the choices she confronts is engrossing, compelling ... an American version of Lisbeth Salander's journey, with considerably more hope allowed to tug at the readers. A must-read, and exactly the right balance of hard-boiled and self-revealing.

Ray Celestin, THE AXEMAN: New Orleans Serial Murder, Lively Crime Fiction

The surge of "imports" in today's mystery and crime fiction is bringing wonderful work to American readers, without the necessity of crossing any oceans. It's almost taken for granted now that the most captivating of Scandinavian, French, and Italian crime fiction will be quickly translated to English and in our hands within a year or sooner -- sometimes even simultaneously with European publication. An odd twist to this situation is the growing number of English, Scottish, and Irish (here I just mean Irish setting, English language) mysteries that ought to be released at the same time in both the United Kingdom and the United States, since the language is close enough to being the same ... but somehow the publishers are not always doing this. I've reviewed several authors' works recently that face a delay of one to three years before jumping the Atlantic to America.

Of all of them, THE AXEMAN by Ray Celestin may be one of the most frustrating in terms of delay, title, and "frills." As the Dutch blogger at A Fantastical Librarian notes, there's very little available online about the author ... and the information on the book, a debut mystery, is mightily confused by its two titles: originally The Axeman's Jazz  and now THE AXEMAN. The longer version is also the title of a Julie Smith book, so that may explain the switch -- but even so, if you go looking for reviews and articles on the book, you'll find most of them appended to the longer title anyway.

That said, for a pleasant interview with author Ray Celestin, check out the already-mentioned librarian blog, linked here. And now for the book itself:

THE AXEMAN opens with a Prologue from the point of view of an alcohol-soaked journalist in May 1919 in New Orleans, John Riley, who stumbles on a letter from a self-proclaimed serial killer, in his newspaper's heap of letters to the editor. The narrative then leaps back a month, to a funeral procession where young Lewis Armstrong adds his trumpet work to the music. Yes, that Lewis ... the one who'd later be Louis. Then it jumps to Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot, inspecting the crime scene of yet another killing by the Axeman, whose gruesome violence is increasing and now includes five occasions. And the third point of view, the one that will become compelling, intimate, and risk-taking, is that of Luca D'Andrea, a newly released convict -- caught between a corrupt police force and the local gangsters. It's Luca's gaze that will become ours, as he walks from where he spent his five-year sentence, toward the city that is his. Or maybe that owns him.

Luca hadn't been expecting his return to New Orleans to be an easy experience. He knew the city was no paradise; it was violent and unforgiving, awash with criminals and immigrant communities that treated one another with hostility and suspicion. But it was also a city with a beguiling energy to it, a bright and opulent charm. For all its segregation and spite, its shabby streets and faded glory, it was easy to become bewitched by the city of New Orleans. And so the whole time Luca was in Angola he couldn't help feeling that when he returned, he would be entering a better world. That the slime of the prison life would wash off him like some kind of amniotic fluid. But now, as he looked at [inquiring reporter] Riley, he wondered if he wasn't just exchanging one kind of slime for another.

Luca and Lewis will connect; mysterious woman and their effects play a role in hunting the killer; and the distance from the 1919 city of New Orleans to Luca's birthplace in Sicily is shorter in some ways than the walk from Angola prison to the downtown.

Celestin's a long-time scriptwriter for film and TV, which explains why his debut novel has the feel of a pro. Not only are the strands of crime and investigation and the pace of suspense and intrigue expertly woven -- but the insight into and connections for Luca, Michael, and young Lewis Armstrong kept me entirely involved. The book's clearly headed into a sequel, set in Chicago, and I hope it will arrive in "the States" soon; I'd drop almost everything else on my desk, to curl up with the next book from the mysterious Ray Celestin.