Crescent City Kill

Book excerpt: As the rich novels of Julie Smith remind us, New Orleans is a city of excess. These days the local philosophy that too much is not enough seems to encompass not only the famed Crescent City pleasures of sex, music, and food, but also the escalating horror of violent death. However, with a new, honest police superintendent, NOPD detective Skip Langdon feels there's hope for the city she loves. But no sooner does Superintendent Albert Good take office than he is gunned down by an assassin, and within hours the killer himself is killed. A mysterious entity calling itself The Jury claims credit for this act of vigilante justice. Who or what is The Jury? No one knows, but Skip perceives in it the evil brilliance of her old adversary, charismatic con man and cold-blooded killer Errol Jacomine. She's always suspected it's just a matter of time before Jacomine's megalomaniacal ego orchestrates his revenge. The time is now. From across the South, the players in the unfolding drama come together--a pretty college student on the run, a monk who has packed a lifetime's worth of misery into a few years, and a madman with a murderous agenda. Beautiful New Orleans gathers them all into her casual embrace, while Detective Skip Langdon races (perhaps to her own destruction) to forestall the bloodshed to come.