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LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
by Julie Smith
Forge Books, August 2002
304 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0765300591


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Talba Wallis is New Orleans newest P.I. She's still working for Eddie Valentino of E. V. Anthony Investigations. Eddie can't fire her. His wife and daughter would be very angry and Eddie doesn't want to annoy the women in his life. Talba and Angie are both very bright, very self assured young woman with the main difference being Talba is a computer whiz, fatherless and black and Angie is an attorney, with a loving father, and white. By night, the Baroness de Pontalba (hence Talba instead of Sandra as her family calls her) is a poet.

While following a suspect, Talba's car is totaled and she injures her back. She goes to a masseuse, a strange new age creature who never drinks anything stronger than green tea, named Babalu Maya. Babalu thinks her boyfriend, Jason Wheelock is cheating on her, so she hires Talba, who discovers that Jason is having it off with another woman. She sadly writes her report, because she really doesn't want to hurt Babalu, and within a very short time, the healer is dead of a heroin overdose. Wheelock comes to Wallis to find the truth. He doesn't believe Maya killed herself since she never took drugs. As Talba digs, she finds that her friend was from a wealthy family in a nearby town and had been married to an alcoholic drug addict, from whom she was divorced.

Meanwhile, Sandra has to come to grips with her own situation. She enjoys living with Miz Clara, her mother, but doesn't understand why she is never allowed to mention her father, so unbeknownst to the rest of her family, she goes on a search for his paramour. Also, her sister-in-law, whom she despises, is very pregnant, which adds to Talba's sense of being on the outside.

Both Talba and Eddie get into trouble while trying to find out the truth behind the death of Clayton Patterson (Babalu Maya) in her hometown of Clayton, Louisiana. Merely by showing her black face in white Clayton, Talba gets into trouble, and Eddie has to come and get her out by tweaking the Louisiana political machine.

Smith's dialogue sparkles. Her characters and their attitudes are part of New Orleans. Eddie isn't sure if he wants a young woman, especially a young black woman, working for him but she IS a computer genius. Talba bulls her way to the conclusion of the case but meanwhile learns something about herself. And my mouth is watering for some of Miz Clara's fried chicken, or Audrey Valentino's 'gravy'. I would have liked a bit more of the Baroness' poetry though.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, July 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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