Crescent City Kill - Hardcover

Smith, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0449910008 ISBN 13: 9780449910009

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1997

Synopsis

As the rich novels of Julie Smith remind us, New Orleans is a city of excess. These days the local philosophy that too much is not enough seems to encompass not only the famed Crescent City pleasures of sex, music, and food, but also the escalating horror of violent death.

However, with a new, honest police superintendent, NOPD detective Skip Langdon feels there's hope for the city she loves. But no sooner does Superintendent Albert Good take office than he is gunned down by an assassin, and within hours the killer himself is killed. A mysterious entity calling itself The Jury claims credit for this act of vigilante justice.

Who or what is The Jury? No one knows, but Skip perceives in it the evil brilliance of her old adversary, charismatic con man and cold-blooded killer Errol Jacomine. She's always suspected it's just a matter of time before Jacomine's megalomaniacal ego orchestrates his revenge.

The time is now.

From across the South, the players in the unfolding drama come together--a pretty college student on the run, a monk who has packed a lifetime's worth of misery into a few years, and a madman with a murderous agenda.

Beautiful New Orleans gathers them all into her casual embrace, while Detective Skip Langdon races (perhaps to her own destruction) to forestall the bloodshed to come.

About this title

About the Author

Julie Smith's Skip Langdon novels, all set in New Orleans, include The Kindness of Strangers, The Axeman's Jazz, House of Blues, New Orleans Beat, Jazz Funeral, and New Orleans Mourning, for which she won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. A former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle, Julie Smith is also the creator of the Rebecca Schwartz series of mysteries set in San Francisco. Ms. Smith divides her time between New Orleans and Oakland, California.

From the Inside Flap

novels of Julie Smith remind us, New Orleans is a city of excess. These days the local philosophy that too much is not enough seems to encompass not only the famed Crescent City pleasures of sex, music, and food, but also the escalating horror of violent death.

However, with a new, honest police superintendent, NOPD detective Skip Langdon feels there's hope for the city she loves. But no sooner does Superintendent Albert Good take office than he is gunned down by an assassin, and within hours the killer himself is killed. A mysterious entity calling itself The Jury claims credit for this act of vigilante justice.

Who or what is The Jury? No one knows, but Skip perceives in it the evil brilliance of her old adversary, charismatic con man and cold-blooded killer Errol Jacomine. She's always suspected it's just a matter of time before Jacomine's megalomaniacal ego orchestrates his revenge.

The time is now.

From across the South, the players in the unfol

Reviews

The mutual hatred between Det. Skip Langdon and New Orleans Prince of Darkness Earl Jacomine that seethed throughout The Kindness of Strangers (1996) comes to a boil again in this saga of The Juror, a high-toned vigilante who executes criminals the law can't touch and writes principled self-defenses to the police. It's bad enough when The Juror takes down recently acquitted wife-killer Billy Ray Hutchison, but when he goes after the murderer of promising new police superintendent Albert Goodlett (a vengeance just about everybody in town privately applauds), he's clearly on a collision course with Skip. That's fine with Skip, who's convinced The Juror is Jacomine--and fine with Jacomine, who has no higher goal in life than to get revenge on this despised female cop. Caught in the middle are Jacomine's fearful wife Tourmaline; his first wife Rosemarie Owens (recently single again courtesy of The Juror); Rosemarie's crazy son Daniel; Tourmaline's scarcely less crazy son Isaac (a.k.a. The White Monk); Daniel's daughter Lovelace (who first makes her appearance getting kidnapped by her father, before things really get strange); and Dorise Bourgeois, widowed by a shot Skip fired in self-defense. Talented Smith's canvas is extravagantly broad, but this time, at least, bigger isn't better; the epic confrontation between Skip and Jacomine feels suspiciously like Pearl White and the Scarlet Claw. Late-breaking news flash: Jacomine escapes from the apocalyptic conflagration that brings down the rest of the house. Looks like every crook in New Orleans who isn't in with Jacomine will get a bye for at least one more installment. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

New Orleans police detective Skip Langdon pits her skills against a vigilante group known as The Jury. Skip suspects her old nemesis, the con man and killer Errol Jacomine. Realism, violence, and good reading from the author of The Kindness of Strangers (LJ 3/15/96).
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A vigilante group calling itself the Jury is killing people who, for one reason or another, slip through the justice system without receiving adequate punishment for their crimes. (The novel begins with a case similar to the O. J. Simpson case--only this time, someone assassinates the sports hero after he receives the not-guilty verdict.) New Orleans detective Skip Langdon suspects an old foe, Errol Jacomine, of being the brains behind the Jury, but she's having a hard time convincing anyone else. This latest Skip Langdon novel is, at times, slightly confusing: the plot's many threads take too long to knit together. But the story is still intriguing, and Smith's fans will no doubt relish the return of Jacomine, the psychopathic (yet charismatic) preacher who wreaked havoc in the previous Langdon novel, The Kindness of Strangers. For another New Orleans procedural series, try D. J. Donaldson's Andy Broussard novels. David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0449910008
• ISBN 13: 9780449910009
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 326