The Ferrotypist - Paperback

Thomas Childs, a former battlefield photographer during the Civil War, works in New Orleans during Reconstruction. He specializes in Memento Mori, ferrotype (tintype) images of deceased loved ones popular during the Victorian Era. Thomas is a loner and a skilled liar with superficial charm and a grandiose sense of self-worth. He has his demons and suffers from Soldier Heart (what we now call PTSD), a laudanum addiction, and multiple pathological tendencies. A killer is at work in the City, and Childs receives several requests to photograph the victims even before they're dead. The killer wants a Memento Mori of their handiwork. But after the murders strike too close to home, Childs, an unlikely detective, has no choice but to begin looking for answers. What starts as an investigation turns into a personal journey, with each step leading him deeper into his own strange heart and that of the City. He encounters Beauregard, a Voodoo Witch Doctor, who has his own ideas about the killings. Childs quickly descends into a nightmare of suspicion and superstition that he might never escape.