LONE WOLF

A veteran detective investigates a string of possibly connected homicides in this debut novel.

“Tibby” Thibodaux, a New Orleans cop and widower living in the French Quarter, is dispatched to Cajun country to track down a possible hit-and-run driver. His suspect, Joseph Landry, provides a suitable alibi. Tibby moves on to more pressing investigations, like the strange killing of an older woman in her home—a homicide made more unusual by the fact that her husband, a liberal candidate for the Senate, was the victim of an unsolved murder two decades before. As Tibby tries to suss out if there’s a connection, he gets an unexpected visit from the FBI. It turns out the bureau is looking at Landry for their own reasons—namely, his possible ties to alt-right groups—and it wants to use the easygoing Tibby to see if it can extract some information out of him. A Black man feeling increasingly at odds with Donald Trump’s political ideology—an ideology that extends to many of his fellow Louisianans—Tibby can’t help but see dark motivations behind some of these crimes. But for a man so close to retirement, just how much trouble does he want to stir up before he heads for the door? Field’s prose, as narrated by Tibby, drips with the sweat and humidity of the setting, as here where the detective explains how he was displaced by “the Storm” (Hurricane Katrina): “Roundabout here, you just have to say how many feet of water you had, and folks know right away what your situation was and probably is as a result. In my case, seven feet. Every penny lost—don't talk to me about no insurance.” Tibby is a compelling protagonist, a world-weary cop who manages to remain upbeat about the wonders—natural and human-made—around him. The author manages to enmesh his story firmly in the politics of the Trump era, and while there are moments when this insertion feels a bit forced, more often it adds a social dimension to the novel that increases the story’s resonance. This, mixed with the ever evocative Louisiana setting, makes for a highly readable piece of detective fiction.

A New Orleans crime tale with a memorable lead.