Allyson Brown, the Girl Gatsby, is 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. To Girl Gatsby Janessa is 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 irascible boss, Eddie, find the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson was widely hated, a con artist who neglected her children, failed to pay her bills, and lied to everyone she wanted something from. 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 canapés of carnage. "Vibrant." -- Booklist on Louisiana Lament "If you haven't read Smith before, this is the time to start. If you're a fan, you're in for yet another treat." --Marcia Muller, bestselling author of Dead Midnight "Can't wait for the next Evanovich? Check out Louisiana Hotshot . It's Stephanie Plum with Tabasco, dawlin'." -- The Clarion Ledger , Jackson, MS "Smith has launched Talba Wallis on a welcome series of her own. Wallis is fine fun to get to know . . . a consistently interesting and likable woman of depth and complexity." -- The Washington Post Vibrant. ( Booklist ) In addition to the Talba Wallis series, Louisiana Hotshot and Louisiana Bigshot, Julie Smith is also the author of the Skip Langdon mystery series and the Rebecca Schwartz series. Her first Skip Langdon book, New Orleans Mourning, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. A former reporter, she lives in New Orleans most of the time. Chapter One The glad tidings had barely arrived: On this particular autumn day, early in the twenty-first century, New Orleans was not going to end up in Davy Jones's locker. The weather service claimed that under certain unfortunate conditions--all of which had been present for hours--the river would flood, the lake would flood, the land bowl between them would fill, and the city would sleep with the fishes. But Hurricane Carol had just veered to the west, sparing The City That Care Forgot, as has every major storm since Betsy in '65. The early-October near-miss was getting to be almost as much a New Orleans tradition as termite swarms on Mother's Day. But you never got used to trying to decide whether to build an ark or not. Everyone who could afford to had left town. Those who couldn't had spent the early morning praying to Our Lady of Perpetual Succor--or at least St. Expedite--for a quick fix. Now that it was granted, Carol was still moving slow and dumping rain by the barrel. The city, unlike its usually playful self, was shrouded in a pall of gray. It was going to be this way all day, and maybe the next. The schools were closed, and so were the city offices, but there was still power, and the phones worked. It was business as usual for many, if you didn't count the apocalyptic rain and the snarled traffic. Both Talba Wallis and her boss, Eddie Valentino, were among those who'd decided to play Russian roulette. But Talba had arrived at E.V. Anthony Investigations, not flushed with the triumph of having guessed right, but late, soaked, and out of sorts. Normally not a pessimist, she actually uttered the old Dorothy Parker line when the phone rang: What fresh hell is this ? "Talba?" said a voice she didn't know. "Talba, it's Janessa." "Who?" she asked, in the confusion of the moment. "Janessa." Long pause. "Janessa ya sister." Janessa, her sister. Whom she had seen exactly once in her life. Who had let it be known she wanted nothing to do with Talba. And who, today of all days, was on the other end of the line. Talba hadn't come close to assimilating this when Janessa spoke again. "I got a situation here." "What kind of situation?" "Bad. Real bad. Can you come on over here?" It didn't occur to Talba to panic. She barely knew the girl. "Janessa, what's going on?" she asked calmly. "I'm on Philip Street, just off St. Charles." She gave Talba an address on the river side of the avenue, in the Garden District, not at all the type of place Talba would expect to find Janessa. The Garden District was old, white, wealthy, stuffy, and way, way out of her sister's range of experience, Talba would have guessed. Janessa had impressed her as a young woman who'd stick pretty close to her own neighborhood, and this wasn't it. "So, Janessa…" She was about to repeat her question when her caller hung up. Well, hell. When she first found Janessa--which hadn't been all that easy,