Drag Baseball

 Bit behind on updating, been a very long couple of weeks. But I did finish Baton Rouge Bingo, the next Scott Bradley mystery by Greg Herren. With Colin out of town, it's Frank's turn to get sucked into Scott's oddball personal life, as one of Scott's mother's friends is implicated in helping to steal Mike, LSU's tiger mascot. Of course, when Mom suggests checking out the swamp hideout her friend might be hiding out at, the find the friend shot in the back. Mind you, this leads to Scott's Dad being kidnapped, and a plot involving Huey Long's long lost box of cash/state bonds that everyone seems to think Mom knows the whereabouts of. 

Ultimately, it's a fun novel, wrapped up in Louisiana history.  

When the Saints beat the Colts

 Greg Herren's Who Dat Whodunnit takes place during the period between the Saints beating the Vikings for the Conference Championship and the Super Bowl where they kicked the crap out of the Colts. surprising everyone. In order to get us into this mindset of all of Louisiana running around yelling "Who Dat!" and "Geaux Saints!" like Cajun Cincinnati-ans... (As someone who grew up listening to crazy Southern Ohioans scream "Who Dey!" for the inferior Ohio team...)

Anyway, to tie us into the absolute insanity that happens when a city's much maligned team suddenly does well, we meet Scotty's cousin Jared, who warms the bench for the Saints, and is therefor the apple of Papa Bradley's eye. Jared just happens to be sort of dating Tara Bourgeoisie, who happens to be a more modern and plastic surgeried Anita Bryant, rallying Louisiana to kill the gays.  

Well, Tara winds up dead, shot with Scotty's mom's gun. (It seems pacifism ends when the levees break and one has to defend what's left of one's property.) And the Marina Werner, daughter of the pastor hosting the anti gay rally Tara was supposed to speak at ends up dead, also killed with Mom's gun. Jared ends up hiring Scotty and Colin (Frank is wrestling for a World Title in the  regional even team he's part of) to clear everyone in the family, since he found Tara's body and really doesn't have much of an alibi.

 Which of course leads into turning over several rocks from everyone's past, including the Bradley family, as a bunch of stinky laundry gets aired out. 

While it's a good yarn, and very engaging, I can't help but notice most of the series is set up like Murder, She Wrote, where we get introduced to a family member or family friend who either gets murdered or becomes the prime suspect.  

Sadly, the goddess in here isn't Oshun or Erzulie

 Again, running behind with updates, but I did get my hands on book 4 of Greg Herren's Scott Bradly series, Vieux Carré Voodoo. 

Now, as I mentioned previously, I started this series with book 3, then ran back and reread the first two. Given it looks like Mr Herren switched publishers between books, this one picks up a few years after the event in Mardi Gras Mambo, and deals with life maybe a year after Katrina. While Franks is now retired, he's off in SW Ohiop attending Pro-wresting school, leaving Scotty alone in the Big Easy. Sory of. We're around Easter here, as Scotty is headed to the Gay Easter Parade. We meet an old family friend, who gives Scotty back a stuffed bunny he barely remembers. Said friend takes a header off the balcony a chapter later, and we find out Colin, who we last saw as a wanted fugitive, is back in town. 

So, we essentially get treated to the redemption arc of Colin/Abram, who now didn't murder Scotty's uncles. We also get a mystery involving an artifact from a small theocracy on the India/Bangladesh border where Kali the destroyer is worshiped. (Despite the book title, when the goddess appears in Scotty's vision, she first appears with several arms holding skulls and a bunch of blood. Given the missing artifact is Her Eye...)

Any rate, most of the book becomes a race between Colin and Scotty trying to solve riddles left by the dead guy leading them to the eye while dodging a few other factions trying to recover the eye for their own reasons.  

While I enjoyed this one, I was expecting something closer to Louisiana Voodoo/Conjure than Indian dual goddess lore. Also trying very hard to figure oiut why the hell Colin is such a yo-yo character, coming in and out of the larger narrative. 

Well, at least they ain't after the levee this time

 So, as part of my evil plot to catch up with a book in a series I read previously, I finished Greg Herren's Jackson Square Blues a few days ago, thus getting me current with the next volume, which is where I started all this. And now I've come to find out the series has nine volumes, and the library only has volumes one and two, with me owning three. 

So yeah. 

Anyway, Scott starts the book off visiting DC to spend time with Frank, his hot FBI boyfriend of sorts. Which sets off a typical gay crisis of "Can I be exclusive, or am I always going to be a raging slut?" soliloquy with Scott. Shameless hussy seems to be winning, as Scott ends up hooking up with a famous amateur figure skater in town for the World Finals. Not that he remembers the hook up, or even the name of the guy, since tequila was involved.

All of which leads to discovery of who the hook up is, the murder of what everyone assumes is a tabloid writer seeking to out the figure skater, and a missing Death Mask of Napoleon's.  Eventually we get a clear picture of what's going on, and how things are and aren't related, and Colin, the stripper cat burgler from the last book, comes back and changes a bunch of relationship ideas. (Having seen how this affects everything in Book 3, I kind of feel like the author liked the character, but couldn't really figure out how best to utilize him.)

Fun book, lightly smutty, and making me really want to go see New Orleans. 

The Saints are Coming

 I had to do some checking on the timeline of when Greg Herron's Bourbon Street Blues was published (2003) vs when Katrina hit the Delta (2005), since some of the plot involves a plot to blow up the levee to flood New Orleans. I think this can be chalked up to horrible timing, as anyone reading the book now will have the actual horror come to mind vs the fictional events here that have a happier ending. 

So, this is the first book in the Scotty Bradley series, which I was happy to finally read after finishing book 3 a few weeks ago. Scott in this one is working as a personal trainer and stripper, and we're opening oin Southern Decadence, aka the big gay party New Orleans hosts every Labor Day weekend. Here, he's single and ready to mingle, although he's working with a methed up porn star and a non local named Colin on top of a bar. 

Well, first, a former trick he still talks to on occasion winds up executed in front of his apartment. Then he finds a disk another former trick shoved in his boot while tipping him. Which in turn evolves into stopping a plot by a gubernatorial candidate to blow up the levees and kill all the gays in New Orleans in order to get elected to state office. (Mostly due to New Orleans, much like Detroit and Chicago, both having large enough voting populations to swing the entire vote of the state.)

I enjoyed this; the humor leavens the seriousness of the plot, and everyone mostly winds up with a happy ending.

Papa Loves Mambo

 I had picked up Greg Herren's Mardi Gras Mambo at Half Price Books a while back, but kept pushing it down the TBR pile for shinier books. While I will never regret my decisions on reading order, it wound up being better than I had anticipated.

Evidently there are two books in the series that precede this, and one follow up, so I jumped in at the middle of the ongoing metaplot. Scotty Bradley is the gay grandson of two wealthy New Orleans families, with very two hippie parents. As this book opens, he's works as a private investigator with his two boyfriends, which is his first real stable paycheck. (Evidently, both sets of grandparents cut him off from the family trust funds, thus why his previous jobs have been stripper and personal trainer.) One boyfriend is former FBI, the other has a rather cloudy past. Scotty can read tarot cards, and occasionally receives visions from the Goddess. 

Anyway, the book starts a few days before Mardi Gras. Scotty has convinced his two straight laced boyfriends to try Ecstasy for the festivities, while they run around in costumes that reveal how built they all are. Which is all well and good, until Scotty's dealer, Misha, winds up dead not long after Scotty buys the drugs.  

Which, since Scotty was the last one to see him alive, makes Scotty the prime suspect. 

There's a hell of a lot involved here, from nearly identical triplets all using the same name, to long buried family secrets. And the final disposition really doesn't make sense, since I can't figure out how a murderer could shoot someone from behind while standing in front of them. On the other hand, the tone of the book does a neat job of staying between total camp, total smut, and deadly serious, which is difficult to achieve in gay mystery fiction. 

Going to have to find the other 3 books now.