Forget hard-boiled dicks, fellas... it's hard-boiled chicks!
A mini-anthology featuring a trio of badass leading ladies, Hard-Boiled Chicks is a collection of the grittiest, edgiest, and darkest mysteries award-winning Julie Smith has to offer. These stories highlight cold-blooded cop killing and civilian justice gone awry, murder staged as an overdose on New Orleans' streets, the discovery of a Gatsby girl's body in her own gaudy pool, the steady debunking of layer-upon-layer of a lifetime of an attorney's lies, and a request for a holographic will--one day before the executor is murdered. Not for the faint of heart, these hard-as-nails mystery novels (plus two bonus short stories!) chronicle three celebrated female sleuths at their most thick-skinned--and will leave readers dripping with realism... and shivering.
CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
“If it’s gritty realism you’re craving, gently simmered with spicy suspense and marvelously memorable characters, Smith is the perfect New Orleans tour guide.†—The Clarion-Ledger
Sure, New Orleans is known for corruption, but suddenly the good guys get a break—an honest police chief. And then someone guns him down. When a terrifying organization called The Jury takes out the cop-killer, Detective Skip Langdon’s on the case. But no one cares! After all, the guy was a cop-killer. Skip cares really a lot—because she suspects The Jury’s the brainchild of her old nemesis, self-described preacher Errol Jacomine.
KID TROMBONE
The troubled heir of a great New Orleans musical legacy has been gunned down. The writer who researched his obituary has met a sudden death. Coincidence? Or did he know too much?
The Big Easy’s premier jazz singer, Queenie Feran, thinks there’s more to it than an accidental overdose, and she hires PI and poet Talba Wallis--AKA the Baroness de Pontalba--to uncover the truth. The Baroness rubs elbows with jazz royalty, sounding them out for clues and swaddling the reader in New Orleans ambience, before she takes to the mean streets to uncover the victim’s secret life.
LOUISIANA LAMENT
"From biker bar to college campus, the chase is on ... readers will remain hooked until the killer's comeuppance in the clever conclusion." -Publisher's Weekly
One stormy day Talba gets an emergency call from Janessa, the sister she barely knows, and arrives to find a body floating in a swimming pool—the mortal husk of Allyson Brown, known in New Orleans literary circles as the Girl Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Allyson was one of those mysterious rich people who move to town, give amazing parties, and seem made of moonbeams. Investigating, Talba finds the reality behind the Gatsby glamour.
OTHER PEOPLE'S SKELETONS
Secrets spill out of these pages like hornets out of a nest, each with its own distinct sting, as author Smith weaves a thrill-packed and complicated San Francisco mystery that’s as much about how little we know about our nearest and dearest as it is about whodunit.
Rebecca’s shocked when Chris Nicholson, her glamorous law partner, is arrested for murder--but not nearly so shocked as when she discovers Chris can’t come up with an alibi. What she was doing, Chris says, involves a secret so damaging she’d be drummed out of San Francisco legal circles if anyone knew. All she’ll say is what her secret isn’t--crime, drugs, sex, alcohol, addiction, illness (mental or otherwise), or an eating disorder. So what’s left? Sure enough, when Rebecca uncovers it, her world tilts on its axis.
BLOOD TYPES
If you’re a lawyer, and someone you haven’t heard from in years calls to ask how to execute a holographic will, what are you to think if he dies the next day? This is a dark, dark story…actually very unlike Rebecca Schwartz’s usual outings.
