Neon Smile - Softcover

Lochte, Dick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804114056 ISBN 13: 9780804114059

Publisher: Fawcett, 1996

Synopsis

"INGENIOUSLY STRUCTURED AND PLOTTED . . . [Lochte] returns for the second time to New Orleans and captures it to the last levee-sided beignet at dawn. In fact, Lochte has become one of its prime delineators."
--Los Angeles Times
A straight-shooting, no-nonsense P.I. like Terry Manion working for the king of ultratacky tabloid TV? Not exactly a match made in heaven. But when Manion gets the chance to reopen a thirty-year-old murder case involving his mentor, J. J. Legendre, he jumps at it. J. J. was still a cop on the New Orleans beat in 1965 when he busted volatile black militant leader Tyrone Pano for murder. Pano called it a frame-up, and Legendre believed him. Legendre finally cracked the case, but three decades later, it falls to Manion to pick up the pieces his teacher missed--and write the shocking ending to the whole sordid scenario. . . .
"THE NEON SMILE is Dick Lochte's magnum opus. . . . I couldn't put it down."
--Jonathan Kellerman
"Dick Lochte has a style of his own: giddy and gaudy on the outside, cynical and perverse under the skin."
--The New York Times Book Review

About this title

About the Author

Dick Lochte is the author of the prize-winning Sleeping Dog, as well as the recent highly praised Terry Manion mystery Blue Bayou. A former book columnist for the Los Angeles Times, he is drama critic for Los Angeles Magazine and is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, and The Armchair Detective. Born and raised in New Orleans, Lochte currently resides in Southern California with his wife, son, and a seventy-five-pound Bouvier with the body of a bear and the soul of a poet.

From Publishers Weekly

Wrapping a 30-year-old investigation inside a contemporary case, Lochte (Sleeping Dog; Blue Bayou) more than doubles the cerebral challenges and literary pleasures in this second appearance of New Orleans PI Terry Manion. A self-described "Henry James sort of guy in a Howard Stern world," Manion is hired by a TV producer to unearth details of the 1965 story of black militant cult leader Tyrone Pano. But he finds himself holding the threads of a pair of mysteries once handled by his own mentor, J.J. Legendre. In a 34-chapter flashback, J.J. is seen embroiled in the ramifications of Pano's arrest for the murder of an FBI plant, while supposedly solving the serial murder case of the Meddler, an imitator of a Marie Laveau voodoo-era killer. As Manion exhumes this latter puzzle, he finds some of the principals still alive and lethal, busy covering their tracks in cases current and historical. Over a dozen richly drawn characters populate this story?from a madame-turned-PI to a black artist who renders Mona Lisa in neon?all set against the delightfully grotesque and corrupt backdrops of 1965 and 1995 New Orleans. Chockful of dark humor, wordplay and subtle clues, the novel is rich enough to reward multiple readings.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fawcett
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0804114056
• ISBN 13: 9780804114059
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 10