Casting Bones

August 22, 2016
This clunky series opener from Bruns (Reel Stuff and six other Stuff mysteries) introduces New Orleans homicide detective Quinton Archer. When David Lerner, a controversial juvenile court judge, is kidnapped and killed, his murder is priority one for Archer and his partner, Adam Strand. Strand is desperate to pin it on a young petty thief, and he’ll do almost anything to get his conviction. Archer is not so sure. Soon other judges begin to die, and Solange Cordray, a beautiful voodoo practitioner, insists that she can help Archer with the case, but she’s got secrets of her own. All signs point to an exclusive club, Krewe Charbonerrie. When more judges are killed, Archer rushes to catch a killer who seems unstoppable and has links to the highest echelons of power. Post-Katrina New Orleans provides a fascinating locale, but hints about former Detroit cop Archer’s painful past (including his wife’s murder), plus a bit of the supernatural, can’t save this by-the-numbers affair. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

A New Orleans detective who seems to be the only one more interested in justice than a collar must rely on instinct over information.Relocated from Detroit, Detective Quentin Archer is still getting used to New Orleans, which, since Katrina, has been more lawless than the Motor City ever was. He's not even sure that his partner, Detective Adam Strand, isn't on the take. Q's penchant for justice outside the law leads him to investigate the murder of Judge David Lerner, who evidently had more enemies than friends. Although Q's not worried about the scant leads in the case, his sense of righteousness kicks in when the department likes one of Lerner's former defendants, Antoine Duvay, for the murder. Duvay, who's barely more than a kid, seems to have no more motive than any of the other people Lerner sentenced harshly. But the heat is on for the department to pin the murder on Duvay, irrespective of his guilt, until seemingly related crimes continue while Duvay is in custody. Now Q is stuck following a single tenuous lead, voodoo practitioner Solange Cordray, who claims to have information based on a psychic encounter with a demented older man. Solange, eager to help, offers only vague hints that the murder is related to Krewe Charbonerrie, a group Q may not have the power to access--until his investigating makes him a target. Although Bruns (Reel Stuff, 2013, etc.) supplies all the necessary characters, plot twists, and motives for murder, they don't entirely come together. Concentrating on one of the many threads he seeks to weave into this tale would have produced a tighter story. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016

Quentin Archer fled Detroit after his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Archer had uncovered a criminal conspiracy involving drugs, his two brothers, and a fellow cop. Now a New Orleans homicide detective, Archer is approached by Solange Cordray, a voodoo priestess, who claims to have knowledge of a plot to kill a judge in the juvenile court system. When Judge David Lerner's body is found floating in the Mississippi and two more jurists are also murdered, Archer and Cordray team up to reveal corruption in the courts as well as the world of for-profit prisons. VERDICT As hot and steamy as a Louisiana night, this series debut hits all the right notes with the evocative Big Easy setting, colorful and memorable characters, and a smartly twisty plot. Bruns (Don't Sweat the Small Stuff; South Beach Shakedown) uses all of his considerable talents to cast a spell over readers.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016
Voodoo is for chumps, right? Only the gullible believe that mumbo jumbo about spells and houngans, and the savvy characters in Bruns' intriguing novel take time to remind each other that, no, there is no magic. But the possibility of spirits' presence is never far away in this tale of big-deal corruption in Katrina-battered New Orleans. A juvenile-court judge is murdered, and the case is given to NOPD detective Quentin Archer, a Detroit escapee whose unmasking of a bent-cop ring in the Motor City led to his firing and his wife's murder. Imagine his surprise when gorgeous young voodoo queen Solange confronts Archer, known as Q through most of the novel, and details his past for him. She also knows that murder is coming because a dementia victim told her so without moving his lips. The working out of this prophecy is at the core of the narrative, giving Bruns' mystery a nice case of the creeps. This is the first in a series featuring Q.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)