Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    Murder in the Rue Chartres

SERIES:   Chanse MacLeod Mysteries #3

AUTHOR:     Greg Herren

PUBLISHER:  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

LENGTH:     248 Pages

BLURB:

Life–and death–don’t stop for disaster in the Big Easy.

Six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, an emotionally battered Chanse returns to a New Orleans that is a battered shell of its former vibrant self to try to pull together the shattered pieces of his life. But on arriving, he discovers that his last client before the storm was murdered shortly after she hired him to find her long missing father—and Chanse is drawn into the Verlaine family’s deadly web of lies and secrets as he tries to find his client’s killer against the backdrop of unbelievable destruction.

The third Chanse MacLeod mystery, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award.

REVIEW:

I posted on Facebook last night after I finished reading book two in this series, Murder in the Rue St. Ann, that I didn’t think I liked Greg Herren any longer. The end of that book was really sad, and after reading the Author’s Comments at the end of that book, I knew why the storyline had to end there, but I was still sad.

So later last night, around 11pm or so, I started immediately into this current installment. In Murder in the Rue Chartres, Mr. Herren, himself a full time resident of New Orleans, pulls us into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was obviously written by a New Orleans resident, and you could feel the author’s own pain coming through in the storyline.  You could also feel his anger and frustration with the horrendous lack of response that occurred after Katrina from FEMA, our then President and other government agencies.  It doesn’t read as a complaining novel though, or a poor me novel.  It reads as true life depiction of the after effects of the hurricane and disastrous flood.  The book justly received the Lambda Literary Award in my opinion.

Chanse has returned to New Orleans after the storm and is trying to get back to his life. He has returned to an eerily empty city and huge devastation, and his friends who seem to be shells of their former selves. All are drinking heavily and walking in a shadow.

Days before the storm, Chanse was approached by Iris Verlaine, a socialite from the Garden District who hired Chanse to find her father who had been missing for 30 years. She had cancelled her contract the next day, but was then found shot dead in her own home. The official cause a botched burglary, but Chanse doesn’t believe it. Her purse was left, as was everything else of value in the house.

Now that he has returned, Chanse goes to the Verlaine mansion to return the check. But things go from strange to downright weird. Iris’ brother hires Chanse to find their missing dad, as a way of honoring his dead sister.

Chanse is off on the hunt. Along the way he will discover just how odd the Verlaine family is. Mr. Herren did a fantastic job of telling this story from a first person viewpoint. I really have enjoyed getting to know Chanse through the three books so far. He isn’t always a nice person. Sometimes he is a total a-hole. But in the end, you really come to care about him, even with some of the stupid decisions he makes along the way!

There were some twists in this book that I didn’t see coming. I’ll be honest, I expected Katrina and the storm’s aftermath. I never expected the story to have ties to the worst gay mass killing in US history. The real life arson at the Upstairs Lounge has never really been solved, and I think Greg might have taken a little license with a few of the facts, but he did a great job with it. If you’ve ever read any of the articles on that arson and the loss of life that occurred when the patrons literally burned to death trying to get out of the bar, or even worse seen the picture of the poor man’s burned corpse fused between the window bars, you will understand that was quite an emotional part of the book for me to read as a gay man. I don’t cry easy, but I cry every time I remember that photo, and this story made me remember it, so yes I cried again.

All in all, I have to say that Mr. Herren continues to tear me up with these stories. I’m hoping the next one is sunshine and light. Yeah right…who am I kidding? I know it won’t be, but you can best damn believe I’ll be reading it next!

I very highly recommend this book, and the two previous which I’ve also read. Both of those were reviewed over the last couple weeks by my fellow reviewers. We will be bringing you the other four books in the series over the next four Fridays. Each of these books could be read as a standalone. While there are some references to events in previous books, they are covered in such a way that you get the facts and aren’t left with questions.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Bold Stroke Books, Inc.

Amazon