The New Orleans Bodyguard Contract

Book excerpt: This novel is about Detective Lincoln receiving in the mail an invitation to be the bodyguard for an apparently wealthy New Orleans gentleman, Sir Charles Conrad Blackwell. Mr. Blackwell was born in rural Louisiana in the bucolic impoverished creole section of New Orleans. His baptized first name was indeed Sir, a calculated move by his mother to make her child stand apart from his inconsequential and impoverished peers and hopefully to provide him with a constant reminder to strive to be above others in his pursuit of a higher grade of life. Sir Charles had married a relatively poor Caucasian woman, Miss Edna Beaumont, a member of a proper family without proper financial resources for his 1st wife. Edna bore him three children, two boys and a girl. Sir Charles 2nd wife, Juanita, bore him two offspring, one boy and one girl. The children had all the opportunities of upper-middle strata economic life, academically and socially stable schools in a safe environment. The children had memberships in mixed-race country clubs, wore fine clothing, and never lacked monetary resources to attend events or travel. But as time moved on, only Sir Charles proved to be financially successful, no one else. Now in his early eighties, his accumulated peculiar personal eccentricities had caused severe stress among family members and others. The Blackwell household now profusely exhibited Victorian repressed social mores. Sir Charles forces his wives and adult children, similar to the classic Scarlett Letter theme, to wear letters of sins on their clothes when they come to visit and he makes them visit on all major holidays. For those who dont comply, theyre cut out of the will, and no one wants that. So, Sir Charles firmly believes that now, either acquaintances, Voodoo practitioners, former business partners, or family members want him harmed or dead and he requests protective services from Detective Lincoln. Will the guileful detective take on the role as bodyguard as requested?