Vieux Carre Voodoo – Greg Herren (Bold Strokes Books)
Buy it now from Giovanni's Room or from our Amazon.com store to help support this site. Vieux Carre Voodoo (Scotty Bradley Series)
Okay, one more post about New Orleans, then I’ll hold off until next year.
I can’t help loving that city, and it comes to my mind every time I read about BP’s destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. But I try not to do that too often. It makes me want to quit my job and spend the rest of my life trying to make those fuckers pay for what they’ve done. But that wouldn’t leave much time to read wonderful books set in New Orleans, like Greg Herren’s latest Scotty Bradley mystery, Vieux Carre Voodoo.
Herren, a longtime denizen of New Orleans, knows his stuff—and after five Chanse MacLeod and three Scotty Bradley mysteries as well as his numerous editing projects, he ought to. Not that familiarity is breeding contempt. He seems to be getting better with each book.
Here, Bradley and his partner Frank as well as their old “friend” Colin leave a trail of corpses in their wake as they investigate the disappearance of a jewel used as the eye of a religious icon, but it really doesn’t matter what the MacGuffin is. What matters is the breakneck pace, the interesting characterizations, the solidly crafted plot and the delicious local flavor that it all simmers in like a slow-cooked gumbo.
Herren’s work is drenched in the essence of the Big Easy, the city’s geography even playing a large part in the solution of a riddle at whose end lies the aforementioned Eye of Kali. But unlike the city, it is not languid. Herren hits the ground running and only lets up for two extremely interesting dream sequences, the latter of which is truly chilling. Is this a breezy beach read? Maybe, but it has far more substance than many. You can spend a few sunny, sandy afternoons with this resting on your chest and still feel as if you’ve read a book.
But even if you’re not at the beach, Herren’s work makes great backyard or rooftop reading, and this one is a terrific place to start. Get them all and make a summer of it. Maybe his next one will be about Kali’s revenge on the BP execs.
Oooo, now there’s a story.
Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler
Posted by Jerry and Bill at 5/30/2010 4:24 PM 
Categories: May 2010
Tags: Gay Bold Strokes Books Fiction
Categories: May 2010
Tags: Gay Bold Strokes Books Fiction
Someone brought me to your website because you were linking some of the books to our website.
Now I see that your new site is linked to Amazon only and you encourage people to buy from them as a way of supporting your site. Have you forgotten that Amazon classified thousands of our titles as "adult," then explained the error as a data entry mistake, then as a glitch, neither explanation worth the words to say them? Then Amazon, without saying a word to anyone, sucked all the eBook copies of 1984 out of the Kindels. They once had a gay bookstore, which didn't know that Gay Talese is a man and not gay and included anti-gay rants among its bestsellers.
Amazon will be pleased you spend many hours promoting them, as they use books as loss leaders for refrigerators and TVs. You haven't heard that Amazon is doing everything it can with billions of dollars to create a monopoly?
Thanks for your reconsideraion,
Ed
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Thank you for your comment. We have always been supporters of the small independent bookstores and always will be. If you look at our posts over the last year, you will see that a link to Giovanni's Room is listed in nearly every post. It is unfortunate that you visited our site on a day when the most recent post did not provide a link to your bookstore. There have been times when we were unable to link to Giovanni's Room due to your website not responding and because of time constraints when posting our reviews, we must publish them with only the Amazon link. I have added a link to Giovanni's Room for the most recent post.
As for Amazon.com being on our website, I personally (and I am speaking for myself and not the others involved with Out in Print) would like every reader of our blog to purchase their books from independent bookstores or directly from the publisher (hence the links), but that is not our reality. People are going to purchase through Amazon regardless of where we direct them with our links. If readers are going to purchase through Amazon, then I would rather them purchase it through our store link so that we can use what little money Amazon offers through their associates program to help fund this queer site.
With regards,
William Holden
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