"ABSORBING...ENTERTAINING...Smith not only gives us the lowdown on the Big Easy but also take us into the often weird world of computer bulletin boards....NEW ORLEANS BEAT is reader-friendly from log-on to log-off." --The Orlando Sentinel An unclassified death on the coroner's daily record is nothing special: a healthy young man found dead after an apparent fall from a ladder. Yet in a neglected old house set inside a jungle of greenery, Detective Skip Langdon listens to an unusually listless mother talk about her son's death and his empty life...and wonders. It seems the shy thirty-one-year-old victim, Geoff Kavanagh, was a computer genius who often frequented the TOWN, a computer network of some 10,000 faceless voices. Within this extraordinary community, strangers achieve an odd type of intimacy, sharing the darkest of secrets. Skip learns that Geoff confessed his own deep secret: he saw his father murdered. Now the TOWN believes Geoff, too, was murdered--and Skip must follow the electronic trail of a killer.... "[A] SUSPENSEFUL MYSTERY...Smith is a skilled writer who can evoke the steamy, mysterious ambiance of New Orleans." --Booklist