Jerry Malone can't go home again. After he escapes Hurricane Katrina, he lives in Manhattan wearing mismatched suits and making mismatched relationships, longing for a redux. When a rich New Orleans heiress hires wisecracking and world-weary Jerry for a case, he returns to his Crescent City. Jerry and the heiress need to find out what happened to a mutual friend who is missing and perhaps dead in the city. Searching the city, he watches it rise from mud, oil, and ashes, and possibilities of his personal redemption reveal themselves. Working in scandal-ridden New Orleans, a city notable for continually rebuilding from The Big Blow and other disasters both social and material, Malone begins to rebuild a failed career and relationship. A tarnished attorney turned detective, he battles the destructive forces of New Orleans' corruption and post-Katrina disintegration. He uncovers and derails a plot by a Saudi native to kill candidates for president by using the New Orleans Museum of Art and an unsuspecting kinetic artist as his tools. Malone's challenge is to save the artist, the city, and himself in a novel framed by post-Katrina confusion, international espionage, murder and violence shrouded in an atmosphere of jaded jazz joints and a city filled with half-failed resurrections and funky characters. The character-driven plot involves crime, terrorism, sex and the quirks and struggles of the post-Katrina social milieu.
About the Author: I was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, of working class parents and attended both public and parochial schools. Upon graduating from high school I attended Loyola University of the South on a basketball scholarship. In 1960 I was picked for Who's Who Among Students ...., graduated cum laude and married Mary Ann Reising. After four years at Louisiana State University, and after having obtained an M.A. in January, 1962, and having finished course work for the doctorate in history, I entered the United States Army in April 1964 as a 2nd Lieutenant. I took my doctorate at a January 1966 commencement. I was released from active duty with the rank of captain in May 1966. My first professional appointment came at Seattle University in September 1966. I taught at Seattle for three years. In September 1969 I accepted a visiting position as associate professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. My first book (see list of publications below) had placed highly in the Turner award competition of the Organization of American Historians. In 1971 I accepted an appointment as an associate professor at the University of Miami. Although my work met the satisfaction of my peers I found the university and city difficult stations. The absence of a doctoral program in history limited my opportunities to direct research. When Texas Tech University offered me a position in September 1973, we moved to Lubbock. Texas Tech consistently supported my work with research money and several faculty development leaves. Most of my published work appeared after arriving here. I also became director of the graduate program for two years before taking a leave. In 1979 the local chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, a history honorary, awarded me the annual Outstanding Teacher Award. In the 1980s I began studying how to use quantitative history techniques and the computer in my work. In 1985 the College of Arts and Sciences picked me as the outstanding research professor of the year. Books: Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain and the United States, 2002; The Draft, 1940-1973, 1993; Lewis B. Hershey, Mr. Selective Service, 1985; The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II, 1979; Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and American Diplomacy, 1936-1945, 1976; American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1968.