New Orleans Mourning: Julie Smith

This is the first novel in the Skip Langdon series by Julie Smith; it won the 1991 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

During Mardi Gras the King of the Carnival, Chauncey St. Amant, is shot on his float during the parade. A character dressed as Dolly Parton shoots him from a balcony as the float goes by. Skip Langdon is one of the cops working on crowd control for the event, and she is near to the float when it  happens.

As the Publisher's Weekly review describes it, she "uncovers a cast of intriguing characters, all as much Chauncey's victims as they are suspects in his murder, most of them inhabiting a 'poison garden of corruption' and substance abuse where it's not just on Mardi Gras that everyone wears a mask." I could not put it any better.

Skip also happens to be a friend of the victim and his family, and it is that and her family's status in the community that allows her to be a part of the investigation, although she is only a rookie cop.

The setting of New Orleans during Mardi Gras was very interesting. New Orleans is a beautiful city but this book focused on eccentric and rich people and corruption in the government and the police. I always find evil in high places depressing, if realistic.

When I read this book, I found the story, centered on an extremely rich and powerful and dysfunctional family, to be unrealistic and over the top. But just recently I read The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald, published in 1950 and set in coastal southern California. It features another rich family with absolutely no well-adjusted, happy people so maybe those types of families are more common than I think. Or they make better subjects for crime fiction.

Although Skip Langdon is a policewoman, this is not a straightforward police procedural, because she is assigned to work with two detectives who don't really include her in the investigation. She is supposed to be gathering information from the family because she has connections, and reporting back to them. One of the pair totally despises her,  the other is sympathetic but still not very supportive. So she basically goes off alone looking for clues and the sleuthing is somewhat haphazard.

Skip is the center of the story, but it is told from the perspective of several characters. I like that method of storytelling although it is not universally popular. Skip has lots of insecurities; she is six feet tall and somewhat overweight and has never fit in with her family. Most of the other characters are extremely eccentric or self-centered.

The ending is unsatisfactory but realistic. I liked this well enough to continue and see what happens to Skip in the next one.


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Publisher:   Ivy Books, 1991 (orig. publ. 1990) 
Length:       339 pages
Format:      Paperback 
Series:       Skip Langdon, #1
Setting:      New Orleans, Louisiana
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      I purchased this book.