Murder in the Vieux Carre: Lia Larieux and the Twisted Tree Detective Agency - Paperback

MURDER IN THE ATCHAFALAYA BASIN
A hypnotic descent into obsession, power, and the geography of revenge.

For readers of Michael Farris Smith and Laura McHugh
Third in the Lia Larieux Southern Gothic series
A hypnotic descent into obsession, power, and the geography of revenge.
This is not a comfortable read. Blaise Thornton is charming, intelligent, and utterly remorseless-and you'll spend extensive time inside his twisted mind as he hunts through the Louisiana bayou. His obsession with Lia is personal, sexual, and rooted in a family history of violence that spans generations.
For readers who loved the psychological darkness of Gillian Flynn and the unsettling intimacy of being inside a killer's head. Set against the atmospheric backdrop of New Orleans and the Atchafalaya Basin, this is literary suspense that doesn't flinch.

In the Pontalba's shadow-stained apartments overlooking Jackson Square, Lia Larieux tends her late father's detective agency like a keeper of relics, sorting through the debris of others' sorrows.
But when the walls themselves begin to watch her, and young women vanish into the humid New Orleans night like sugar in rain, she discovers someone has been documenting her life through a hole in the plaster, cataloging her every movement with the patience of a spider.
A predator is hunting the women of New Orleans with an intimacy that betrays careful selection, a man settling debts that only he can name-and when his hunger pulls her deeper into the Atchafalaya's maze of water and shadow, Lia realizes she's not the hunter anymore; she's the hunted.
In a reluctant partnership with Casimir, a disgraced former NOPD detective whose own ghosts swim just beneath the turbid waters of the Mississippi, Lia descends into a Louisiana that tourists never see: fortunes built on cruelty, where wealth can make even the worst sins disappear.
In prose as thick and dangerous as August heat, Murder in the Atchafalaya Basin explores how some men will construct debts that exist only in their minds-and will extract payment from whoever is softer, closer, more easily taken when their obsession refuses to surrender.

Richly atmospheric Southern Gothic literary suspense for readers who appreciate slow-burn tension and evocative sense of place.
Can be read as a standalone, though readers will appreciate the full arc of Lia's journey.

*Content Note: This novel contains violence, serial killer POV, references to sexual assault (not graphically depicted) as part of the backstory.