DIVINE RUIN

Every criminal element in New Orleans seems determined to prevent Holiday Walsh from taking her permanent vows as Sister Holiday of the Sublime Blood.

When Fleur Benoit, a popular senior in the high school where Holiday teaches music, is found dead in the gym from a fentanyl overdose, Holiday springs into action. It doesn’t matter that Sister Honor, her principal and Mother Superior, forbids her to have anything to do with identifying Fleur’s supplier, or that Holiday’s ceremony of final avowal is only a week away. After all, she’s perfectly equipped for the job by her background as a foul-mouthed, gold-toothed, heavily tattooed “gutter dyke” and her close affiliation with her friend Magnolia Riveaux, who runs the Redemption Detective Agency. The two women’s inquiries soon attract the attention of Sgt. Ruby Decker, the NOPD Homicide investigator who already has reason to blame Holiday for the death of her wife. But although Holiday gets the dressing down she expects, Decker offers something more in addition: the chance to go undercover disguised as someone very like Holiday’s earlier self in order to trick Lenny Mastoni, the top lieutenant of the Royal Family of criminals, into giving away information that would help Decker bring the whole Family down. The mystery is sharp and the solution surprising, but the biggest draw here is Holiday’s anguished attempts to balance the demands of the flesh against the call of the spirit. As she puts it: “I had a new mission from God. Always my toughest client.”

A keenly drawn portrait of the novice as a deep-dyed sinner whose sleuthing vocation moves her ever closer to the light.