Book excerpt: Crime reporter Samantha Adams hits the Big Easy for Mardi Gras—and sticks around to catch a killer—in this “witty mystery [with] swift repartee” (Publishers Weekly). This Mardi Gras, crime reporter Samantha Adams is heading to New Orleans to visit her old college roommate Kitty. Together they’ll see a few parades, dance in the streets, and watch Kitty’s debutante niece be crowned queen of Comus. But the fun turns frightening when Sam witnesses a masked driver commit what looks like vehicular homicide. When the victim’s aristocratic family asks Sam to investigate, she finds a few more skeletons in the closet than they care to have uncovered. Teaming up with handsome insurance investigator Harry Zack, and enlisting the help of a voodoo priestess, Sam picks up a trail that leads her from the parade grounds into a dangerous web of deceit, old money, and murder.