City of the Dead
Daniel Blake
412 pages
Gallery Books 2012
City of the Dead is a good thriller but it unfortunately does not live up to its interesting premise. This Daniel Blake mystery is set in New Orleans in the days right before Katrina. It promises to involve voodoo and a priestess. It ends up being just another whodunit and its resolution is quite a letdown. Kindle at Amazon
Franco Patrese is a Pittsburgh FBI agent relocated to New Orleans after something went wrong in the steel city. He is invited to a party where a beautiful woman tells him about Noah’s Ark. She is then found dead with her leg cut off and a snake in its place. The murder also has other voodoo elements.
Patrese teams up with a NOPD cop named Selma, a good Christina woman angered by the recent acquittal of voodoo priestess Marie Laveau.
More people are found ritually killed and it seems there is a serial killer and nut job on the loose. Patrese’s job is made more difficult when he realizes he cannot trust his colleagues in the FBI.
Daniel Blake is a good writer. The problem is he does not deliver what City of the Dead promises and the promised story would have been better than what you get here.