The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Novels) - Hardcover

Smith, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312062958 ISBN 13: 9780312062958

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1991

Synopsis

New Orleans detective Skip Langdon must track down the brutal Axeman--a serial killer who preys on the city's hundreds of twelve-step recovery groups and who will spare anyone in whose home a jazz band is playing on the night of his rampage

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Julie Smith not only firmly establishes her claim to the New Orleans crime scene, but she explores an intriguing new franchise for the serial killer."
Sue Grafton
For detective Skip Langdon, the murder of a multiple self-help group member is no fun. Even if the guilty character is claiming the mantle last held by the Axeman, a notorious New Orleans serial killer of seventy years ago. Yet as Skip threads her fascinated way from one self-help group to another, she finds she has more in common with the twelve-steppers than just the murder. And she knows what they do not: that among their anonymous numbers is a deadly murderous, and dangerously attractive -- psychopath....

From Publishers Weekly:

It's a steamy August in New Orleans and a murderer has borrowed the name of the Axeman, a serial killer who roamed the city in 1919. The modern-day Axeman has strangled a young woman and stabbed an elderly man, beside whose body a teddy bear is found. The letter "A" is scrawled near both corpses in lipstick and in blood. Both victims, it develops, were members of 12-point recovery programs modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous; the killer may be using the groups' anonymity as a shield. A most appealing heroine, Skip Langdon, first encountered in 1990 Edgar nominee New Orleans Mourning , is now a homicide detective assigned to the Axeman team. Risking her life, Skip must get close to suspects, among them beautiful but ditzy Di, a New Era devotee; the very angry Alex, "a walking testosterone bomb" who writes self-help books; Sonny Gerard, a stressed-out second-year medical student; and Missy, Sonny's overmothering girlfriend. With an acute ear for New Orleans speech and a sharp eye for the city's social stratification, Smith keeps the reader's heart palpitating to the end of this mystery of unusual depth, which leaves Skip in love, confident she's a good cop and triumphant over social-climbing, tradition-bound parents.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0312062958
• ISBN 13: 9780312062958
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 341