Part of Series
SOME MEAN-ASS CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST in this EIGHTH entry in the Tubby Dubonnet series. "The literary equivalent of a film noir –fast, tough, tense, and darkly funny"…-Los Angeles Times Book Review “Reminiscent of the best of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard." -Booklist The laid-back New Orleans lawyer finds himself caught in a twisted trip down memory lane, distracted by a luscious new love, and, as usual, surrounded by screwball denizens of everybody's favorite city. But he's also caught in someone's crosshairs, and so are half the cast of crazies and screwballs. Which makes for a delicious mix of danger and humor (with a dash of romance!), best consumed with a tall cold one and a bag of Zapp's Spicy Cajun Crawtators . When in the 1970s a young war protester is killed in broad daylight on Canal Street, it appears that his murder will be forgotten, a back page story lost in the big news of an especially violent era. But a youthful Tubby chanced to see it happen, and the tragic event's haunted him throughout his life. Decades later, an established (but not exactly driven) lawyer, yet successful enough to have time on his hands, Tubby decides to conduct his own investigation into the forgotten crime. He quickly stirs up a hornets’ nest of far-reaching political feuds, police corruption, government agents, and old men with secrets to hide. But as in all Tubby Dubonnet novels, the plot takes a backseat to local color, colorful characters, odes to fine food, wry observations, and a whole lot of humor. It's a little like spending a weekend in da Big Easy, dawlin'—complete with three well-chosen meals a day! WHO WILL LIKE IT: Fans of Tremé, softshell crab po’ boys, Domilise’s, the Upperline Restaurant…wait, let’s start over—ok, legal mysteries, particularly Parnell Hall’s Steve Winslow series and anything by Lia Matera, comic mysteries, Elmore Leonard, funny lawyer movies like My Cousin Vinny, TV shows like Ally McBeal and Night Court; and everyone’s favorite New Orleans yarn, Confederacy of Dunces. “Hair-Raising ... Dunbar revels in the raffish charm and humor of his famously rambunctious city.” -New York Times Book Review “The literary equivalent of a film noir –fast, tough, tense, and darkly funny…so deeply satisfying in the settling of the story’s several scores that a reader might well disturb the midnight silence with laughter.” -Los Angeles Times Book Review “Take one cup of Raymond Chandler, one cup of Tennessee Williams, add a quart of salty humor, and you will get something resembling Dunbar’s crazy mixture of crime and offbeat comedy.” - Baltimore Sun “Dunbar catches the rich, dark spirit of New Orleans better than anyone.” —Publishers Weekly
Author
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.
