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This book was a slight disappointment; I'd read some of Smith's earlier works, though not recently, and picked this up semi-randomly at the library yesterday. The narrative voice, or maybe focus, seemed disjointed. It's certainly possible to do third-person and move the authorial/descriptive eye among several characters, and I'm not entirely sure why it doesn't work here; that the character called "Talba" when she's the focus becomes "Ms. Wallis" when the focus is on her employer seems relevant.
Louisiana Lament is a mystery set in New Orleans around 2003 (the copyright date is 2004), which feels a bit odd to be reading now, especially as the book takes place during and immediately after a near-miss by a hurricane, and one of the characters is yelled at, reasonably, for going out on a boat while the hurricane warnings were still up. Skip Langdon, the protagonist of some of Smith's earlier mysteries set in New Orleans, turns up very briefly in this one, entirely by telephone.
I had trouble keeping track of some of the characters, including some who are central to the mystery. The ones at the emotional center, including Talba, her mother, her sister Janessa, Janessa's friend Rashad, and Talba's employer Eddie Valentino (the other character whose actions and sometimes thoughts the narrative follows) are clear and well-drawn. Eddie is a white man in his sixties, a lot older than Talba, and not entirely comfortable with having an assistant who is young, black, female, and well-educated; he was persuaded to hire her by his daughter and wife, and realizes they were right, but knowing that she's competent doesn't entirely relax him.
When she's not doing detective work, Talba Wallis is a poet, one of several writers in the book, who performs at open mike nights and such as well as having published one book of poetry. The book includes a bit of Talba's poetry, which isn't my style, and a bit of Rashad's (it's easier to write poetry that isn't supposed to be good, as we're told (correctly, I think) Rashad's isn't, though Talba reads it in search of clues.
I also suspect I'd have had an easier time following the story, and maybe appreciated the book more, if I'd either liked The Great Gatsby or read it more recently (it was on the very long list of stuff we did in high school), since various characters refer to it—the woman found dead in the first few pages is known, none too affectionately, as "the Girl Gatsby"—and draw parallels between the book and their own relationships. (The characters in Gatsby are identified, but in loose terms like "the mistress," so I missed the emotional resonances I think Smith was trying to set up.)
Louisiana Lament is a mystery set in New Orleans around 2003 (the copyright date is 2004), which feels a bit odd to be reading now, especially as the book takes place during and immediately after a near-miss by a hurricane, and one of the characters is yelled at, reasonably, for going out on a boat while the hurricane warnings were still up. Skip Langdon, the protagonist of some of Smith's earlier mysteries set in New Orleans, turns up very briefly in this one, entirely by telephone.
I had trouble keeping track of some of the characters, including some who are central to the mystery. The ones at the emotional center, including Talba, her mother, her sister Janessa, Janessa's friend Rashad, and Talba's employer Eddie Valentino (the other character whose actions and sometimes thoughts the narrative follows) are clear and well-drawn. Eddie is a white man in his sixties, a lot older than Talba, and not entirely comfortable with having an assistant who is young, black, female, and well-educated; he was persuaded to hire her by his daughter and wife, and realizes they were right, but knowing that she's competent doesn't entirely relax him.
When she's not doing detective work, Talba Wallis is a poet, one of several writers in the book, who performs at open mike nights and such as well as having published one book of poetry. The book includes a bit of Talba's poetry, which isn't my style, and a bit of Rashad's (it's easier to write poetry that isn't supposed to be good, as we're told (correctly, I think) Rashad's isn't, though Talba reads it in search of clues.
I also suspect I'd have had an easier time following the story, and maybe appreciated the book more, if I'd either liked The Great Gatsby or read it more recently (it was on the very long list of stuff we did in high school), since various characters refer to it—the woman found dead in the first few pages is known, none too affectionately, as "the Girl Gatsby"—and draw parallels between the book and their own relationships. (The characters in Gatsby are identified, but in loose terms like "the mistress," so I missed the emotional resonances I think Smith was trying to set up.)