CASTING BONES

A New Orleans detective who seems to be the only one more interested in justice than a collar must rely on instinct over information.

Relocated from Detroit, Detective Quentin Archer is still getting used to New Orleans, which, since Katrina, has been more lawless than the Motor City ever was. He’s not even sure that his partner, Detective Adam Strand, isn’t on the take. Q’s penchant for justice outside the law leads him to investigate the murder of Judge David Lerner, who evidently had more enemies than friends. Although Q’s not worried about the scant leads in the case, his sense of righteousness kicks in when the department likes one of Lerner’s former defendants, Antoine Duvay, for the murder. Duvay, who’s barely more than a kid, seems to have no more motive than any of the other people Lerner sentenced harshly. But the heat is on for the department to pin the murder on Duvay, irrespective of his guilt, until seemingly related crimes continue while Duvay is in custody. Now Q is stuck following a single tenuous lead, voodoo practitioner Solange Cordray, who claims to have information based on a psychic encounter with a demented older man. Solange, eager to help, offers only vague hints that the murder is related to Krewe Charbonerrie, a group Q may not have the power to access—until his investigating makes him a target.

Although Bruns (Reel Stuff, 2013, etc.) supplies all the necessary characters, plot twists, and motives for murder, they don’t entirely come together. Concentrating on one of the many threads he seeks to weave into this tale would have produced a tighter story.