Part of Series
Legal thrillers with a twistTwo kickass lawyers take on a handful of colorful clients—and murder—from San Francisco Bay to the Big Easy. Tubby Dubonnet is a simple man with a refined palate, a maverick New Orleans lawyer with a penchant for fishing, Old Fashioneds, off-track betting…and fighting evil while passing a good time. Rebecca Schwartz is a nice Jewish girl who just so happens to be a smart, savvy lawyer, with a few too many fantasies … and no qualms about telling it like it is. Tony takes on drugs, the Mob, and his impossible daughters while Rebecca wrestles with murder mystery at the aquarium and the most dangerous serial killer San Francisco’s ever seen. Four refreshing, page-turning legal puzzlers for a deal so reasonable, no one can object! CROOKED MAN The FIRST offbeat mystery in the TUBBY DUBONNET series by Anthony- and Edgar-nominated author Tony Dunbar Tubby Dubonnet’s clients are all renegades from the asylum (aka Orleans Parish). His newest client is Darryl Alvarez, the manager of a local nightclub who's been caught unloading marijuana from a shrimp boat. At their first meeting, Darryl entrusts Tubby with an ordinary-looking blue gym bag. But after Darryl's unfortunate demise, Tubby realizes he must tighten his grasp on the gym bag—and its million-dollar contents. TOURIST TRAP The THIRD book in Edgar-winner Julie Smith's Rebecca Schwartz series. So what’s a nice Jewish girl doing at an Easter sunrise service? Lawyer Rebecca Schwartz would pick the one with the body nailed to the landmark cross! Coincidence? Not so much. She's there because her boy friend's covering the service for the San Francisco Chronicle. The body's there because someone's making a statement he doesn't want the press to mass shellfish poisoning at Pier 39. A very different kind of serial killer is operating here—one who seems to have a grudge against the whole city.CITY OF BEADS The SECOND deliciously sneaky mystery in Anthony- and Edgar-nominated Tony Dunbar's Tubby Dubonnet series Tubby Dubonnet is bored. He wants to bill enough hours to pay his alimony and keep his daughter in college, with enough left over for an occasional drink and a good meal, but he longs for something different and exciting. Sure, researching licensing law for the new casino will keep trout meunière on the table, but what could be more tedious? Meanwhile, there’s the estate of an old friend who controls some dock leases on the wharf. And he agrees to help his daughter’s environmental group stop illegal dumping in the river. Suddenly all three cases begin to converge in an entirely ominous way–the toxic dumping, the dock leases, and the too-good-to-be-true casino job. How is that possible? Could it be Tubby’s been set up as the fall guy in a Mob effort to expand its gambling empire? NOW it's exciting—he's running for his life! DEAD IN THE WATER This is the FOURTH book in Edgar-winner Julie Smith’s Rebecca Schwartz series.
Authors
Author of 20 mystery novels and a YA paranormal adventure called BAD GIRL SCHOOL (formerly CURSEBUSTERS!). Nine of the mysteries are about a female New Orleans cop Skip Langdon, five about a San Francisco lawyer named Rebecca Schwartz,two about a struggling mystery writer named Paul Mcdonald (whose fate no one should suffer) and four teaming up Talba Wallis, a private eye with many names, a poetic license, and a smoking computer, with veteran P.I. Eddie Valentino. In Bad GIRL SCHOOL, a psychic pink-haired teen-age burglar named Reeno gets recruited by a psychotic telepathic cat to pull a job that involves time travel to an ancient Mayan city. Hint:It HAS to be done before 2012! Winner of the 1991 Edgar Allen Poe Award for best novel, that being NEW ORLEANS MOURNING. Former reporter for the New Orleans TIMES-PICAYUNE and the San Francisco CHRONICLE. Recently licensed private investigator, and thereon hangs a tale. Resident of New Orleans, Louisiana
Tony Dunbar started writing at quite a young age. When he was 12, growing up in Atlanta, he told people that he was going to be a writer, but it took him until the age of 19 to publish his first book, Our Land Too, based on his civil rights experiences in the Mississippi delta. For entertainment, Tony turned not to television but to reading mysteries such as dozens of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Among his favorites are: Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, and Tony Hillerman, and John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane. He has lived in New Orleans for a long, long time, and in addition to writing mysteries and more serious fare he attended Tulane Law School and continues an active practice involving, he says, “money.” That practice took a hit in the Hurricane Katrina flooding, but the experience did produce a seventh Tubby Dubonnet mystery novel, Tubby Meets Katrina The Tubby series so far comprises seven books: The Crime Czar, City of Beads, Crooked Man, Shelter from the Storm, Trick Question, Lucky Man, and Tubby Meets Katrina. The main character, Tony says, is the City of New Orleans itself, the food, the music, the menace, the party, the inhabitants. But Tubby Dubonnet is the actual protagonist, and he is, like the author, a New Orleans attorney. Unlike the author, however, he finds himself involved in serious crime and murder, and he also ears exceptionally well. He is “40 something,” the divorced father of three daughters, a collector of odd friends and clients, and he is constantly besieged by ethical dilemmas. But he is not fat; he is a former jock and simply big. Tony’s writing spans quite a few categories and is as varied as his own experiences. He has written about people’s struggle for survival, growing out of his own work as a community organizer in Mississippi and Eastern Kentucky. He has written about young preachers and divinity students who were active in the Southern labor movement in the 1930s, arising from his own work with the Committee of Southern Churchmen and Amnesty International. He has written and edited political commentary, inspired by seeing politics in action with the Voter Education Project. And he has had the most fun with the mysteries, saying, “I think I can say everything I have to say about the world through the medium of Tubby Dubonnet.” Hurricane Katrina and the floods, which caused the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans for months, blew Tony into an off-resume job serving meals in the parking lot of a Mississippi chemical plant to hundreds of hardhats imported to get the complex dried out and operating. It also gave Tony time to write Tubby Meets Katrina, which was the first published novel set in the storm. It is a little grimmer than most of the books in the series, describing as it does the chaos in the sparsely populated city immediately after the storm. “It was a useful way for me to vent my anger,” Tony says. Still, even in a deserted metropolis stripped of electric power. Tubby manages to find a good meal. The Tubby Dubonnet series has been nominated for both the Anthony Award and the Edgar Allen Poe Award. While the last one was published in 2006, the author says he is now settling down to write again. But about what? “Birds and wild flowers,” he suggests. Or “maybe television evangelists.” Or, inevitably, about the wondrous and beautiful city of New Orleans.
