Talba Wallis Series by Julie Smith
Talba Wallis #1
Louisiana Hotshot
Julie Smith
The FIRST mystery in the Talba Wallis series. “Wanted: Hotshot P.I. with super-human skills.” Confirmed grump Eddie Valentino placed the ad. Hotshot twenty-something Talba Wallis knew exactly how to answer it. And thus was born the dynamic duo of New Orleans private detection, one cynical, sixty-five-year-old Luddite white dude with street smarts, and one young, bright-eyed, Twenty-First century African-American female poet, performance artist, mistress of disguise, and computer jock extraordinaire. In Louisiana Hotshot, their job is to hunt down a sociopath and pedophile who’s molested the fourteen-year-old daughter of their client, hangs out in the sordid byways of the rap and recording industries, and has more powerful allies than a Cabinet member. In her personal life, Talba faces another mystery, one so frightening no one will help her investigate. But she knows she won’t sleep till she solves it—and the truth will change her forever.
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Talba Wallis #2
Louisiana Bigshot
Julie Smith
By night the glamorous Baroness de Pontalba, by day New Orleans's hippest PI, Talba Wallis is dumbfounded when she can't do a simple background check on an old friend - Babalu Maya just doesn't seem to exist on paper. Four days later, she doesn't exist at all. And the man who should be Talba's new worst enemy becomes her new best client.As Talba and her curmudgeonly boss, Eddie Valentino, thread their way backward through Babalu's short, difficult life, they find an intricate pattern of violence and fear and a shadowy Mr. Big with homicidal intent. Talba butts right into everybodys business in Clayton, Louisiana, a small town with a big, ugly secret, where being black, mouthy, and smart are the three qualities most likely to get her killed. As she uncovers dark truths, events and people spiral into nasty motion in a story that has more twists and turns than the Mississippi River.But Talba's poetic soul (as the Baroness, she's a poet and performance artist), impeccable computer skills, facility with high-tech equipment, and willingness to bend the law get her through in fine style, along with a little help from Eddie, her sweetheart Darryl Boucree, and her sharp-tongued mama, Miz Clara.
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Talba Wallis #3
Louisiana Lament
Julie Smith
Allyson Brown--the Girl Gatsby, they called her. A woman of wealth, hostess of fabled parties, patron of the arts, especially of poets. Found floating in her own swimming pool, shot to death.Poet and fledgling detective Talba Wallis gets an urgent call from the sister she barely knows, Janessa. The Girl Gatsby was Janessa's close friend. But this call isn't an invitation to an elegant literary salon. Janessa wants off the hook as the principal murder suspect.Investigating, Talba and her perpetually irascible boss, Eddie, find the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson Brown was widely hated, a con artist who neglected her children, failed to pay her bills, and lied to everyone. The one person she loved may have ushered her to her death.The case takes Talba and Eddie from literary parties to Gulf Coast bait shops, from biker bars to abandoned wharves, and finally to the story of another Gatsby, which may yield answers, or greater mysteries.Louisiana Lament is Talba's journey through the not-so-genteel Southern literary scene, where backbiting and petty jealousies abound and mint juleps are served with canapés of carnage.
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Talba Wallis #4
P.I. On A Hot Tin Roof
Julie Smith
When PI Talba Wallis gets a frantic phone call from Orleans Parish Prison, the last person she expects to hear from is her boss's lawyer daughter, Angie. Popped for drug possession, Angie insists the drugs were planted. She's a target for representing a neighborhood group protesting the illegal commercial use of a marina by its owner, Judge Buddy Champagne. According to Angie, the judge is dirty---and he's the one who had her set up.Talba and her boss, Eddie, are outraged---knowing Angie as they do, they pull out all the stops for her. And when Talba goes undercover as a housekeeper for Judge Champagne, she finds a household straight out of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with the judge playing Big Daddy. The weak son and the hot daughter-in-law are in residence, being "between jobs." Big Mama's absent, though---she died some time ago, and the judge is now adding his fiancée to the mix. That would be Miss Kristin LaGarde, an impossibly lovely, and possibly innocent, young lady who seems hopelessly in love with the old coot.Talba dredges up lots of interesting material; such as that someone was accidentally electrocuted at the marina and that the judge is in bed with certain bail bondsmen. She finds evidence of bribes and kickbacks. He's dirty all right. When the story breaks and the scandal deepens, Judge Champagne winds up dead. And, to her surprise, Talba is asked to investigate. Did politics kill the judge? Or was it his own family?
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