Murder in the City that Care ForgotFans of Treme and avid armchair adventurers alike will love this collection of oddball New Orleans tales—specifically, murder mysteries—each revolving around the incomparable lore of the City that Care Forgot. From an untimely demise at JazzFest to a dose of love laced with intrigue amongst an assortment of vivid local characters in an Uptown pharmacy (the kind you could only find in the N.O.), Festival of Murder has a little bit of something for everyone—everyone who loves New Orleans, that is. Cuddle up with a Kindle and enjoy this all-expenses-paid vacation to the fabled Big Easy (drive-thru daiquiris not included). JAZZ FUNERAL The THIRD book in the Edgar Award-winning Skip Langdon mystery series Everybody loved easygoing Ham Brocato, producer of the famed New Orleans JazzFest. So how did he end up stabbed to death on his kitchen floor?New Orleans Homicide Detective Skip Langdon just happens to be on hand when Ham’s body is discovered in the middle of his own party the evening before the Fest. To complicate the already murky case, the victim's sixteen-year-old blues musician sister has disappeared, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn't the murderer, she's in mortal danger from the person who is. CITY OF BEADS The SECOND deliciously sneaky mystery in Anthony- and Edgar-nominated Tony Dunbar's Tubby Dubonnet series. Tubby Dubonnet’s bored. Sure, researching licensing law for the new casino will keep trout meunière on the table, but what could be more tedious? (Unless, of course, the client turns out to be the mob.) 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. Ho-hum, thinks our hero. But suddenly all three cases begin to converge in an entirely ominous way. And Tubby’s running for his life. MAKE ME DEAD A Vampyres of Hollywood mystery by Adrienne Barbeau As always in a Vampyres of Hollywood mystery, the biting wit is sharper than a nip from a passing vampyre—in a word, humor, wit, and satire are what this engaging series is really all about. Nobody’s better than Barbeau at skewering the foibles of Hollywood and its self-involved denizens, and nobody’s got a smarter mouth than her movie star heroine, vampye Ovsanna Moore, this time in New Orleans for a horror convention. (Fasten your seat belts—lots of fun to be had at the expense of horror conventions!) PICK-UP LINE A Love Story With Wit, Charm and Murder by Patty Friedmann Cupid’s working overtime in the unlikely venue of N.O. Drugs, where plus-sized beauty Ciana Jambon works with dread-locked pharmacy student Lennon Israel, who’s so handsome, so meticulous, he just has to be gay. But she can't help herself—she’s got the crush of the century. And a murder to unravel. PI ON A HOT TIN ROOF The FOURTH mystery in Edgar-winning author Julie Smith’s Talba Wallis 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.
