3rd in the Chanse MacLeod series. This one takes place right after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Chanse was hired by a wealthy woman who is looking for her father who disappeared prior to her birth. She is killed the night before Katrina hits. Chanse goes to return the check for his services to the family and his hired by her brother. The brother is drowning his sorrows in booze after the hurricane and apparently falls to his death from the roof of their mansion. The coincidences turn out to be too many for Chanse who continues his investigation. Along the way we meet a "crazy" Aunt who is in an asylum, an older gay man, the crotchety grandfather and his bodyguard. The first part of the book really deals with the destruction wrought by Katrina. The later part of the book gets more into the mystery. ( )

In the last days before Katrina strikes Chanse MacLeod is hired by Iris Verlaine to find her father, who disappeared before she was born. The night before the hurricane strikes, Iris is killed, allegedly by a burglar. When Chanse returns to the stricken city Iris's brother Joshua asks him to take up the case again.

Much of the actual mystery was very predictable, though still a fun read. Where this book stands out, though, is in the description of the heartache suffered by the characters we've got to know over the first two books in the aftermath of the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods. ( )

Rating: 4.3* of five

The Publisher Says: Murder hits the Big Easy.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Chanse MacLeod returns to a different, shattered New Orleans in an attempt to rebuild his own life and face his own future. When he discovers that his last client before the storm was murdered the very night she hired him to find her long-missing father, he is drawn into a web of intrigue and evil that surrounds the Verlaine family.

My Review: There is no escape from the past. It supports us, if we're lucky; it drags us down from otherwise attainable heights, if we're not. This third installment of Herren's Chanse MacLeod mysteries reinforces this sad, inescapable lesson in a harsh and cruel and painful way, only for once it's not Chanse that does most of the suffering. Hired to look into a 32-year-old disappearance by the daughter of a vanished father, Chanse ends up fired before he can so much as cash the check...and then his client turns up dead. Odd, that...and her in the throes of planning her wedding? Something smells fishy to Chanse, who returns her retainer check in person to the dead woman's older brother. Surprise there: Chanse now has a much larger retainer check and a new client who wants the same job done. In short order, Chanse meets the patriarch of this singularly unlucky clan; loses his new client to what he is morally sure is murder; breaks up with his rebound guy, a nice-but... that he met in the last book; has a quickie with an old friend, newly single; and learns that his hag/best friend is leaving post-Katrina New Orleans. To finish her book, she says.

Rest assured, though: The right people end up in the right places and Chanse, for a wonder, actually unthaws his cryogenically preserved, battered, bruised, and broken heart, resolving to live his life and not simply exist in it because he's not dead yet.

New Orleans post-Katrina is a grim backdrop for this outing. I suspect in many ways anyone who has written about New Orleans since 2005 has written out of a sense of atonement, or expiation, or making things right, because after all they're alive and so very many aren't any more. Chanse comes home from a stay in Dallas to find that he's lost nothing in the storm or the flood; his friend Venus lost everything, for example, as did so many. The hero of a mystery series needs obstacles to make him more interesting that simply a crime-solving computer. The obstacles here, well, they're pretty grisly...driving around and seeing those horrible, horrible "X"s showing where bodies were found...refrigerators abandoned as far from homes as possible so they won't add to the mold problems, and adorned with anti-government slogans...well, this leads Chanse to a minor breakdown. No duh.

I am not, at heart, a New Orleanian. I got out of the car in 1975 and said, "Jesus, what a dump." Nothing in all the time since has made me think anything different. I don't miss going there, and wish our friends from there would come here to visit. But the city is one of the world's most popular destinations, and it's got a certain raffish charm that shines through in these books. I still don't want to go there. But I like the Chanse MacLeod character's development and growth, and I like the secondary characters like Paige, his hag, and Venus, the tall and elegant lady detective; who knows, maybe Herren has let us see a glimmer of hope for Chanse to have a shot at boyfriendly bliss!

Kinda doubt it, though. Remember what happened to "Moonlighting" when Cybill Shepard and Bruce Willis finally got it on? ( )

This is not a particularly good mystery novel; rather it is a lament for the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Private detective Chanse Macleod returns home to New Orleans several weeks after the hurricane has passed to complete work on a case he was given the day before the storm. His client was murdered prior to the storm's arrival so there's some initial question about whether he will continue with the assignment. He decides to carry on with it , more or less to give himself something to do while he decides whether to stay in New Orleans or move elsewhere.
This book can be a placeholder in the series, if the author wants to continue with it. At the end of the book (after the mystery is solved), it is ambiguous whether there will be another book. Macleod decides to stay in New Orleans so there is the basis for the series to continue. ( )

Hurricane Katrina has just devastated New Orleans and now Chanse MacLeod comes back to the city. His impressions and problems caused by this inferno are much more important in this book than the detective story. He has to find a person long gone and to solve a murder to which. And when there's just one suspect... there's not so much to guess. G. Herren just choses not to rise suspension by introducing other serious candidates. That makes the mystery part quite dull. So don't expect fascinating twists or an exciting ending. No, it's more about what impact a hurricane has on human lives in a once beautiful city. I don't mind that but please don't call this a murder mystery. I love detectives but this isn't one although it claims to be and looks like one. ( )