An Edgar Award-winning murder mystery and four thrilling sequels at a killer price!Save over 50% on five Skip Langdon Mysteries!Follow the remarkably bold, smart, and refreshingly human homicide detective Skip Langdon through the twists and turns of a New Orleans teeming with crooked cops, mob encroachment, and southern kinships gone awry. The resourceful former debutante-turned-rookie cop … debutante-turned-rookie cop investigates the shooting of a prominent Uptown socialite at Mardi Gras, tracks a terrifying serial killer, searches for a runaway teen – a person of interest in the stabbing of the well-loved director of the famed New Orleans Jazzfest, weaves her way through the tangled cyberspace web of a pre-Facebook virtual community, and caps it all off by unraveling the murder of a legendary restauranteur and the kidnapping of his family.
“Gritty, witty, & mesmerizing! Langdon is a splendid female heroine.” –People Magazine
”Like a good Grisham: taut, fast, and thrilling. But with a lot more heart and soul.” -The Clarion-Ledger
“The real star of this superb effort is New Orleans, which has never seemed more dangerous or alluring—or less easy.” -Publishers Weekly
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and civic leader and socialite Chauncy St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a parade-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Is the killer his aimless, promiscuous daughter Marcelle? Homosexual, mistreated son Henry? Helpless, alcoholic wife Bitty? Or some unknown player? Turns out the king had enemies…
AXEMAN’S JAZZ
What’s the perfect killing field for a murderer? A place where he (or maybe she) can learn your secrets from your own mouth and then make friends over coffee. A supposedly “safe” place where anonymity is the norm. The horror who calls himself The Axeman has figured it out and claimed his territory—he’s cherry-picking his victims in the 12-Step programs of New Orleans.
JAZZ FUNERAL
Skip Langdon just happens to be on hand when Ham Brocato, director of New Orleans Jazzfest, is discovered dead on the kitchen floor in the middle of his own party the evening before the Fest. To complicate the already murky case, the victim’s sixteen-year-old blues musician sister has disappeared, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn’t the murderer, she’s in mortal danger from the person who is. Melody’s dangerous yet exhilarating journey tugs at the heart and raises the pulse rate.
DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
It’s a chilly November in 1994, and thirty-one-year-old Geoff Kavanagh surreptitiously splits his time between science fiction novels and cyberspace in his parents’ dilapidated, overgrown, uptown New Orleans mansion. Until his mother finds him dead from a suspicious fall off a ladder. Maybe he should never have posted about seeing his father murdered …
HOUSE OF BLUES
Sugar Hebert arrives home from a ten-minute errand to find her husband shot to death and the rest of her family missing—including her daughter Reed, heir apparent to the Hebert restaurant dynasty, and Reed’s eleven-month-old daughter.
Fans of Ace Atkins, Tana French, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Muller will love Skip Langdon’s pluck and charm in this bountiful bundle, which includes the first five books in the series.
more
“Skip Langdon Mysteries Vol. 1-5” by Julie Smith are wonderful books that readers will not be able to put down. Readers meet Skip Langdon, a homicide detective in New Orleans who is called upon to solve a series of murders. We first meet Skip Langdon in “New Orleans Mourning” Volume 1. She is a dedicated beat police officer who is called upon to act as special undercover investigator and help Detectives Joe Tarantino and Frank O’Rourke of the Homicide Division of the New Orleans Police Department solve the murder of one of the rich members of New Orleans society. Skip is chosen because she is the daughter of the famous doctor of the elite and the Police Chief is sure she knows the ins and outs of their high society. Her mother and father have been very upset that she, a former debutante, has chosen to become a police officer, a career they believe is far beneath their family status. Skip however is six feet tall, overweight, and has really never seen herself fitting into the role that her parents had chosen for her. It becomes Skip’s duty to find the murderer among the people she has had to associate with before she joined the Police Department. In “New Orleans Mourning”, the author, Julie Smith, gives us a taste of the Mardi Gras and the upper level of society in New Orleans and shows us how Skip’s reasoning abilities help her see what more experienced detectives do not see. Because Skip is so competent in solving the murder of chosen Mardi Gras King Chauncey St. Amant King, she is promoted to Detective and joins Detectives Joe Tarantino and Frank O’Rourke in solving the other murders that occur New Orleans in the subsequent volumes. In the first volume we also meet Steve Steinman, a filmmaker who has filmed the murder and becomes important in the other volumes as Skip’s friend and lover and her sounding board for her theories of how to find the different murderers. In addition, we meet Jimmy Dee, a fifty-year-old drag queen who is Skip’s landlord and friend, always available to listen to her theories about her cases and to help her with her feelings of insecurity caused by not fitting into the role that her parents wanted for her and also, not being as experienced as the other detectives in her division, especially with Detective Frank O’Rourke who is either against a woman becoming a detective and/or against a woman from high New Orleans society. Readers will become totally involved with Skip and her adventures and will probably read through the night as I have. They will want to join me in reading more than the first five volumes about the adventures of Skip Langdon.
Keeps you on the edge.
Love NO stories
Skip seems a little too wild to be in law enforcement. She’s also very self-doubting.
As expected, some of the story plots in this series were better than others. I’ve enjoyed most of Julie Smith’s work.
Great story and characters. I enjoyed reading it without errors except for Chapter 24 in the second book which reads, “Those who were were drinking coffee, ;;;” Easy to overlook with the skill and imagination it took to create these stories. I like that I can’t predict the outcome.
Sorry not my cup of tea.
The characters were realistically quirky, as most of us actually are. The plots thicken. The final dish is served up on a silver platter. The reader comes away fully satisfied and hoping to be invited back for the next serving.
I never even finished the first book. Too much history on the Mardi Gras and the story was so slow. I thought it was boring so I deleted it.
Nice to read about a female character who is not gorgeous, breath taking —- just a female lead. But smart and fun.
Interesting and easy to read. Enjoyed Ithem.
Real characters, good feel for New Prleans social life and caste system and an interesting mystery.
Great reading!!!!!
Love this series. New Orleans is its own character.