Ze'ev Chafets

T-Rouge and the Cajun Job is a fast-moving comic caper set in Louisiana on the eve of Y2K. When a devious small-town lawyer turns an ordinary bank robbery into the opening shot of a phony Cajun liberation movement, politicians, federal agents, French operatives and the international media descend on Trahan Parish. At the center is T-Rouge Landry, an alligator farmer, Saturday-night hell-raiser and reluctant revolutionary whose heart proves harder to manage than the rebellion bearing his name.

Before T-Rouge, I wrote thirteen books on subjects ranging from Detroit, baseball and American religious life to education, politics and organized crime. They include the novels Inherit the Mob, The Bookmakers, Hang Time, The Project and Whacking Jimmy, and nonfiction works including Devil’s Night, Heroes and Hustlers, Cooperstown Confidential and A Match Made in Heaven.

The bayou setting is not as unlikely as it may seem. I am not a Cajun but for many years I was part of a family whose roots in Louisiana go back more than two centuries. They taught me a lot, for which I am very grateful. Trahan Parish, the Cajun Liberation Movement and the characters in the story are all fictional. But to me, it has a been a fun place to imagine. I hope it will feel the same to you.