What a great title!
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed these. They are so very bound up in the setting, this story could take place nowhere but New Orleans - and assuming that Smith's background or research is as good as it seems - we outsiders see something of New Orleans that is not known by many. "The City that Care Forgot" with its motto of "Laissez les bons temps roule" is just not such a carefree place as they would have the world believe.
At the levels of society which drive the city, roles are rigidly defined and those who fail to behave as required are severely punished. Skip Langdon is one of those. Her failure to increase her parents' status by moving gracefully through the social rituals drives her into exile. She eventually returns to The Big Easy in a role designed to torture her social-climbing mother - as a cop.
And such a New Orleans crime - the King of Carnival is shot dead - on his float during the Rex parade. Skip is a uniformed officer on foot patrol during Mardi Gras and actually witnesses the crime. That, with her upbringing inside New Orleans' elite, puts her on the investigating team.
Skip is a great character and the story is not as totally grim and perverse as the preceding paragraphs may have sounded. Still, the humor and light touches are all in the personal life of Skip - not in the murder and investigation.
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