Julie Smith: Louisiana Lament

From the Publisher:
Allyson Brown - the Girl Gatsby, they called her. A woman of wealth, hostess of fabled parties, patron of the arts, especially of poets. Found floating in her own swimming pool, shot to death.

Poet and fledgling detective Talba Wallis gets an urgent call from the sister she barely knows, Janessa. The Girl Gatsby was Janessa's close friend. But this call isn't an invitation to an elegant literary salon. Janessa wants off the hook as the principal murder suspect. Investigating, Talba and her perpetually irascible boss, Eddie, find the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson Brown was widely hated, a con artist who neglected her children, failed to pay her bills, and lied to everyone. The one person she loved may have ushered her to her death.

The case takes Talba and Eddie from literary parties to Gulf Coast bait shops, from biker bars to abandoned wharves, and finally to the story of another Gatsby, which may yield answers, or greater mysteries.

Louisiana Lament is Talba's journey through the not-so-genteel Southern literary scene, where backbiting and petty jealousies abound and mint juleps are served with canapes of carnage.

Julie Smith: Louisiana Lament. A Talba Wallis Novel. Forge, ISBN: 0765344661 (July, 2005), 308 p., $6.99