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jwrosenberg69's review against another edition
Have to be honest I went to Tulane so I knew just about all the places they described in the book. Even still I like the character of Maureen and I will keep reading this series. And I am not the series type of reader. But I liked seeing how she was treated and dealt with being a pleb cop.
tbsims's review against another edition
1.0
rather than try putting books in a 'not interested' folder, I'm going to claim I read them and give a low rating. Putting in not interested, the algorithm seems to think I like the book.
jwr69's review against another edition
Have to be honest I went to Tulane so I knew just about all the places they described in the book. Even still I like the character of Maureen and I will keep reading this series. And I am not the series type of reader. But I liked seeing how she was treated and dealt with being a pleb cop.
jakewritesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
The Devil She Knows was one of the best books I've read this year and while this one isn't quite as good, it's still really good. Moving the action to New Orleans, Bill Loehfelm takes a bird's eye view of the city, mostly staying away from the Quarter in favor of examining the rest of the city broken by Katrina.
Something Loehfelm does well that I'm often critical of for white writers, specifically white men, is write good non-white, non-male characters. Maureen feels like a fully realized person; Loehfelm doesn't spend lengths of time talking about her anatomy or how hard it is to find a decent man. She wasn't Born Sexy Yesterday. She's a real human with real issues and a real personality. The people she interacts with, mostly Black, feel like real people, not reduced to the basest form of stereotyping.
The mystery didn't grip me enough to get it to 5 but this is a good entry the series, with the groundwork laid for more.
Something Loehfelm does well that I'm often critical of for white writers, specifically white men, is write good non-white, non-male characters. Maureen feels like a fully realized person; Loehfelm doesn't spend lengths of time talking about her anatomy or how hard it is to find a decent man. She wasn't Born Sexy Yesterday. She's a real human with real issues and a real personality. The people she interacts with, mostly Black, feel like real people, not reduced to the basest form of stereotyping.
The mystery didn't grip me enough to get it to 5 but this is a good entry the series, with the groundwork laid for more.
lenitas's review
4.0
Entertaining read. The author really brings New Orleans to life, with a lot of name-dropping but all of it feels very organic. I look forward to reading the rest of the books in this series.
clambook's review
5.0
I can't get enough of this series. Took No. 3 out of the library before finishing No. 2. Loehfelm is a terrific writer, period. Not just a mystery writer. His characters are beautifully drawn, starting with his protagonist, Maureen Coughlin, but including secondary ones such as Maureen's mom and the Falstaffian Preacher Boyd. He has a magnificent sense of place -- Staten Island and its bars in the first book, New Orleans and its flood-stained streets in the second -- and a great ear for how real people speak. Loehfelm has gotten plenty of compliments from peers like Laura Lippman and Megan Abbott, and fine, but this guy is a big league novelist, not merely a good practitioner in a genre.
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