Louisiana Hotshot: A Talba Wallis Novel - Hardcover

Smith, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765300583 ISBN 13: 9780765300584

Publisher: Forge Books, 2001

Synopsis

Edgar Award-winner Julie Smith returns to the bewitching streets of New Orleans with the smartest, sassiest, hippest detective ever-the Baroness Pontalba.

Meet the snazziest P.I. in the land. Not by accident does she roam America's jazziest city, New Orleans. By day she is Talba Wallis: smart, sassy, ebony, and a fledgling detective. By night she is the Baroness Pontalba: poet laureate of the city's smoky rooms, matron saint of her town's exotic and multi-colorful café society.

Goaded into a day gig by her pushy mom, she finds herself employed by Eddie Valentino, and Talba is plunged into a world of fame, money, and power run amok, hunting a man who seduces teenage black girls and may be making them disappear. At the same time she is haunted by disturbing near-memories. Her forgotten past only emerges when violence enters her life-but not, she learns, for the first time.

About this title

Review

Talba Wallis, the smart, sassy, African American computer whiz who's also a gifted poet and artist, made her debut in Smith's last Skip Langdon mystery, 82 Desire--along with her alter ego, the Baroness de Pontalba. Here she's back in a story of her own, holding court at a hip café by night (and keeping her audience entertained with the rap story of how her mother named her Urethra) while embarking by day on a new career as a detective under the cynical aegis of Eddie Valentino, an old PI who's never encountered anyone quite like her before.

But Eddie's got problems of his own, so he turns Talba loose investigating the possible molestation of a young black teenager and the disappearance of a couple of her friends. There's something about the violent trail she's following on this, her first case, that's stirring up Talba's own memories of her long-gone father, about whom neither Miz Clara, Talba's tough and crusty mama, nor her yuppie brother the doctor will utter a word. Set in New Orleans, territory Smith knows well, this is a lively mystery with a vivid, outrageous, and wholly likable new heroine whose appearance will be welcomed by fans of the writer's Skip Langdon series. --Jane Adams

About the Author

Julie Smith currently lives and writes in the Faubourg Marigny district of New Orleans, a neighborhood of nightclubs, restaurants and coffee shops where shady characters mix with artists. The author of nineteen novels, she was born and raised in Savannah before escaping to the University of Mississippi. After graduation, Smith became a reporter, first for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and later the San Francisco Chronicle. She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years before returning to New Orleans.

Smith abandoned reporting for writing mysteries in the early 1980s, writing a series featuring attorney Rebecca Schwartz and a second series starring Paul McDonald, a reporter turned mystery writer whose fate you wouldn't wish on a dog. A few years later, she launched a third series featuring New Orleans police detective Skip Langdon with New Orleans Mourning, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel in 1991. She currently alternates between writing about Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis, an African-American poet/private eye who debuted in "Louisiana Hotshot."

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0765300583
• ISBN 13: 9780765300584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320