Julie Smith: New Orleans Beat (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
An unclassified death on the coroner's daily record is nothing special: a healthy young man found dead after an apparent fall from a ladder. Yet in a neglected old house set inside a jungle of greenery, Detective Skip Langdon listens to an unusually listless mother talk about her son's death and his empty life... and wonders. It seems the shy thirty-one-year-old victim, Geoff Kavanagh, was a computer genius who often frequented the TOWN, a computer network of some 10,000 faceless voices. Within this extraordinary community, strangers achieve an odd type of intimacy, sharing the darkest of secrets.

Skip learns that Geoff confessed his own deep secret: he saw his father murdered. Now the TOWN believes Geoff, too, was murdered--and Skip must follow the electronic trail of a killer...

Julie Smith: New Orleans Beat. A Skip Langdon Novel. Ivy Books, ISBN: 080411336X (June, 1995 - 3rd printing, no date given), 357 p., $5.99.

Julie Smith: New Orleans Beat (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
If you want to know what's going on out there Lin the real world, read a Julie Smith novel. Her Skip Langdon mysteries give us the scoop about the kinds of social (and antisocial) phenomena that never make the evening news And in New Orleans Beat, Smith reveals an American subculture that may be the most fascinating one yet.

An unclassified death on the coroner's daily record was nothing special: a healthy white male found dead after an apparent fall from a ladder. So unimpressed are the police that not until four days later is Detective Skip Langdon sent to investigate.

But in a neglected old house set inside a jungle of greenery, Skip listens to a strangely listless mother talk about her son's death and his empty life... and wonders, It seems the thirty-one-year-old victim, Geoff Kavanagh, was a computer genius yet he was still living with his parents, clerking in a video store, and had just started dating. Of course, there were his pals on the TOWN-a bulletin board community of some 10.000 computer nuts, who behind a thin veil of anonymity achieve an intimacy they might never handle face-to-face, sharing their darkest secrets and deepest problems with people they've never seen.

Geoff's confessed secret. Skip learns, is that he saw his father murdered, although he can't remember the face of the killer. Now the TOWN believes that Geoff, too, has been murdered, and has set up a new topic. Out on the TOWN, to talk about it. Skip secretly penetrates this curious shadow society, and soon perceives that not only is Geoff Kavanagh's death not an accident, it's murder of a particularly unattractive kind, lethal to anyone who gets too near the truth...

Julie Smith: New Orleans Beat. A Skip Langdon Novel. Ballantine / Fawcett Columbine, ISBN: 0449907430 (July, 1994), 359 p., $21.50.