The Devil in Her Way

Starred review from March 4, 2013
Loehfelm’s excellent second novel featuring Maureen Coughlin takes the former Staten Island bartender to New Orleans, where she finds a fresh start with the NOPD and redemption trying to save one child from the violence of the streets. Although her first day as a rookie cop starts badly, with a suspect punching her in the stomach, the arrest uncovers a large stash of drugs and guns. But Maureen is more interested in two boys—one 12, the other an older teen—hanging around the crime scene. Her concern for the kids leads her to a shadowy figure who makes children into criminals before disposing of them. Aided by her training officer, Preacher Boyd, Maureen learns to be a cop and follow her instincts. Loehfelm meshes graceful prose with edgy suspense and an authentic view of New Orleans’ myriad neighborhoods, bars, and restaurants, where a “Café du Monde frozen au lait” is “the closest thing in this world to ambrosia.” Agent: Barney Karpfinger, the Karpfinger Agency.

February 15, 2013
That scrappy Staten Island waitress returns as a rookie cop in post-Katrina New Orleans in this sequel to The Devil She Knows (2011). Only a year after dispatching two really bad guys on her home turf, Maureen Coughlin has graduated from the police academy in New Orleans. Her idea is to start over somewhere new; wounded herself, she identifies with a wounded city. Maureen's makeover in not complete: "she hated the raw fury that swirled inside her." That fury shows itself on her first assignment, a domestic violence call. She overreacts by hurling the perp to the ground and is admonished by her training officer, Preacher Boyd, a jaded veteran near retirement. More serious crime scenes follow. An addict trying to locate drugs in a neighbor's green Plymouth is shot to death; then a 13-year-old's burnt body is found in the car's trunk. From clues dropped by another at-risk kid, a drummer in a marching band, Maureen gathers the instigator is Bobby Scales, a mysterious figure with no criminal record. But just when Loehfelm should be tightening the screws, zeroing in on Scales, he pauses for flashbacks to Maureen and her mom on graduation day. Another scene, in which Maureen is dumped by her boyfriend, further slows the momentum. New Orleans is an inexhaustible trove for crime writers, so it's disappointing that the NOPD, reputedly the most corrupt in the nation, is represented by just two cops, Preacher and Atkinson, the upstanding female homicide detective whom Maureen sees as her role model. There's a corresponding dearth of major league criminals. We barely glimpse Bobby Scales, whom Maureen, without her gun, recklessly chases on foot through the tourist-packed French Quarter; he escapes. Some readers will find Maureen admirable; she has a big heart and is always up for a challenge. Others will feel the last thing the city needs is a new officer with a hair-trigger temper. Readers will be turned off by the sluggish pace and paucity of action.

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Starred review from April 1, 2013
In The Devil She Knows (2011), Loehfelm introduced an indelible character, 29-year-old Staten Island cocktail waitress Maureen Coughlin. Smart, tough, and desperate to escape an empty life, Coughlin realized that somewhere else she could be someone else. So she moved to New Orleans and joined the NOPD. She was valedictorian of her police-academy class, but street patrol with Training Officer Preacher Boyd is her real education; she is sucker-punched in the book's first sentence, when she responds to a domestic disturbance. Preacher, a cranky, weary master of the politics and culture of both the NOPD and the street, struggles to dampen her impulsiveness and make her a match for what she will encounter. Loehfelm's plot spins out of that domestic situation and centers on Marques, a 12-year-old who witnessed the sucker punch and who Coughlin intuits is headed for deep trouble. Previously, Loehfelm made New York's least-known borough, Staten Island, a genuinely compelling character. Incrementally, he does even more with New Orleansa shambolic city in the best of timesstill devastated by Hurrican Katrina. His portrait of the city and its residents is tragic, elegaic, hopeful, and even loving. Crime aficionados will love The Devil in Her Way, and librarians should consider recommending it to any reader who seeks wonderfully drawn, complicated, deeply human characters and a brilliant sense of place.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)