Cat-Eyed Trouble

From Barnes & Noble

Every once in a while, somebody manages to do something new and refreshing with the traditional private-eye story. Robert Skinner's Wesley Farrell walks the mean streets of New Orleans in the early 1930s. In Cat-Eyed Trouble, Farrell tries to find out why an old girlfriend was murdered, and what her connection was to a former detective who was framed for a murder some years back. The book is almost science fiction in that the world of New Orleans circa 1933 is similar to reading about life on another planet. Sexy, sassy, and beautifully atmospheric, this book marks Skinner as a major player.

—Sue Reider

Library Journal

Israel Daggett's release from prison and possible desire for revenge worry several people in 1938 New Orleans. The ambitious woman who framed the now ex-cop for murder plots his death, the crucial eyewitness to his purported crime hides, someone murders Daggett's "woman," and Wesley Farrell, determined sleuth and reluctant police ally, wants answers. Skinner, a skillful storyteller (Skin Deep, Blood Red, LJ 1/97), works each character's unique background into the dusky atmosphere of Depression-era New Orleans as he stirs up a vibrant underworld of jazz clubs, drugs, and crime. A superb and captivating historical mystery. [Skinner is University Librarian at Xavier University of Louisiana.Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

Five years after he gets framed for killing streetcorner hustler Junior Obregon, and several hours after his waiting girlfriend Lottie Sonnier gets executed gangland style, ex-cop Israel Daggett, released from Angola, pulls back into New Orleans. Even before Iz finds out about Lottie's death, gangster Joe Dante's slant-eyed mistress Stella Bascomb is waiting at the train station to greet him with a bullet. Iz isn't the only one who wants to avenge Lottie's murder: Cafe Tristesse owner Wesley Farrell, still passing for white, and Club Moulin Rouge owner Savanna Beaulieu are out for the truth too. But Stella isn't alone in this eithershe shuttles between well-connected Dante and crooked ex-cop Walt Daggett, Iz's own cousin. When the two trinities lock hornsand that's pretty much all that happens in this violent, colorful 1938-set sequel to Skin Deep, Blood Red (1997)sparks fly. Iz gets shot at and attacked by a pair of thugs; Farrell gets shot at and dumped into the Mississippi; Savanna gets kidnapped and raped; and the body count goes through the roof. Skinner outdoes even Red Harvest and The Big Sleep in distributing corpses; it's hard enough to remember who's been killed, let alone who's still available to stand as suspects. The tensely textured hard-boiled milieu is practically the only survivor.