Wesley Farrel
Created by Robert Skinner

"... she was enough to make a Baptist minister drink swamp water, crawl inside a hollow log, and bay at the moon."
-- from Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

WESLEY FARRELL is a successful nightclub owner and sometime-private eye, "passing for white" in Depression-era New Orleans in this critically acclaimed series. Farrell's a vivid and intriguing character, very ambivalent about his own racial status, determined to keep it a secret, yet not shy about using that ambivalence if he must to move around easily in either black or white society. He's also on the fringes of the law, bending and twisting the rules, when it suits him, and more than willing to use a little violence to get to the point.

A colourful setting, a sharp eye for the telling local detail and Skinner's deft hand with the Chandleresque similes brings New Orleans alive in all its steamy glory, and the sense of community and strong characterizations add weight to the series, at times reminiscent of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books.

The first book in the series, Skin Deep, Blood Red, was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and both it and its sequel, 1998's Cat-Eyed Trouble, received heaps of critical praise, so his publisher dropped him. Are these guys morons or what?

Fortunately, Poisoned Pen Press decided to pick up the series for the third book, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, and this promising series was rescued.

NOVELS

• Skin Deep, Blood Red (1997)...Buy this book
• Cat-Eyed Trouble (1998) ...Buy this book
• Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1999)...Buy this book
• Blood to Drink (2000)...Buy this book
• Pale Shadow (2001)...Buy this book
• The Righteous Cut (2002)...Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Suggested by O'Neil De Noux, who writes about a New Orleans P.I., Lucien Caye.