Louisiana Lament

money back if you find as many as five errors in this book. (That’s five
verified
errors—punctuation or spelling that leaves no room for judgment calls or alternatives.)
    If you find more than five, we’ll give you a dollar for every one you catch up to twenty.
    More than that and we reproof and remake the book. Email [email protected] and it shall be done!

The next novel in the Talba Wallis series is LOUISIANA LAMENT .
    The Talba Wallis Series
    LOUISIANA HOTSHOT
    LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
    LOUISIANA LAMENT
    P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Also by Julie Smith:
    The Skip Langdon Series
    NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
    THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ
    JAZZ FUNERAL
    DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)
    HOUSE OF BLUES
    THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
    CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
(formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)
    82 DESIRE
    MEAN WOMAN BLUES
    The Rebecca Schwartz Series
    DEATH TURNS A TRICK
    THE SOURDOUGH WARS
    TOURIST TRAP
    DEAD IN THE WATER
    OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS
    The Paul Mcdonald Series
    TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE
    HUCKLEBERRY FIEND
    As Well As
    WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK
    NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)
    And don’t miss ALWAYS OTHELLO, a Skip Langdon story, as well as the brand new short story, PRIVATE CHICK, which asks the question, “Is this country ready for a drag queen detective?” More info at www.booksBnimble.com .

Acknowledgments
    It takes at least a village to write a book. My heartfelt thanks to my fellow villagers: Police Captain Linda Buczek, Doctors Ken White, James Robinson, and Mary Frances Gardner; attorneys Mary Howell and Jim Petersen; office mavens Kathy Perry and Randy Weaver; independent experts Betsy Petersen and Kit Wohl; and PI Fay Faron.
    Extra thanks to another PI—Lasson Legros,
mon professeur.
If Eddie is becoming increasingly Lasson-like, it may be no accident. If Talba is, she’s catching on.
    Special thanks to the real-life “Sergeant Rouselle” for unwittingly supplying Chapter One.
    And eternal thanks to my beloved husband, Lee Pryor, who’s always ready to go exploring.

About the Author
    JULIE SMITH is a New Orleans writer and former reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle
and the
Times-Picayune
.
New Orleans Mourning
, her first novel featuring New Orleans cop Skip Langdon, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and she has since published eight more highly-acclaimed books in the series, plus spun off a second New Orleans series featuring PI and poet Talba Wallis.
    She is also the author of the Rebecca Schwartz series and the Paul Mcdonald series, plus the YA novels CURSEBUSTERS! and EXPOSED. In addition to her novels, she’s written numerous essays and short stories and is the editor of NEW ORLEANS NOIR.

LAGNIAPPE: An Excerpt from JULIE SMITH’s MEAN WOMAN BLUES, a Skip Langdon mystery:
    May is the cruellest month.
    September has its moments, being hurricane season, but its meanness is unreliable. May is a sure thing.
    On Mother’s Day, give or take a week or so, the Formosans swarm, only slightly less consistent than the swallows at Capistrano. They continue their inexorable flight, sometimes in terrifying indoor clouds, well into summer.
    Formosan termites, accidentally imported some years ago, are eating the city of New Orleans. They are doing it not in bug-sized nibbles, but in greedy gulps that some people say they can actually hear. They swear that in the dark of night, as they lie awake kissing their investments good-bye, they can hear the buzz of so many tiny saws, mandibles chomping their floor boards.
    Perhaps they are merely blessed with good imaginations, but a visitor who arrives in the merry month, strolls a few blocks, and finds himself wearing a vest of termites may be inclined to credit them.
    The unsuspecting stay-at-home finds himself in a fifties sci fi film. It begins with a single bug. It may fall on his clothing or perhaps the desk upon which he’s writing. He brushes it off and another falls, like an earwig from the eaves of a porch. He looks up and sees a few winged creatures bouncing off the chandelier. Odd, he thinks, and goes back to his reverie. And soon there are more bugs. And more. And more. The room may fill with them, thick shrouds of them, circling, diving, turning the air into a seething dark mass.
    It may seem the sensible thing to run screaming for cover, but in fact there is an easier way—our hero can simply turn off the light and they will leave or die. Or he can just wait, if he can stand it. The winged ones, the alates, or