New Orleans Murder Mystery: Horizontal Garden

The novel takes place during a mayoral runoff election in New Orleans in 1994, the year the murder rate reached 424, giving the city the dubious distinction of being the nation's "Murder Capital."

The novel's main characters are Ashley Georgina Tarleton, Wyatt Terranova, Xavier Chenier, Keiffer Conright, and Ashley's father and mother. Ashley, a thirty-year-old socialite and entertainment reporter for TV 3 News, is given the opportunity to cover the "hard news," regarding the mayoral runoff election. The candidates are Chenier, fifty-five, the African-American incumbent who was once a civil rights activist, and Conright, fifty-five, a politically ultraconservative, allegedly racist businessman who may have ties to the American Nazi Party. Ashley teams with Wyatt, thirty, her cameraman, to report the race.

However, when they meet at the Café du Monde in the French Quarter to discuss their tactics, a drive-by killing of a young Creole woman occurs only a few feet away in front of Jackson Square. Ashley is first to reach the woman and watches her die. Disturbed by this, Ashley is determined to investigate the woman's life, and cover the election. They set off on an adventure in newsgathering, taking the reader inside a mansion on St. Charles Avenue and inside a housing project, and many other unique places in between. On this journey, she gathers news about the candidates, civil rights, the Holocaust, ghosts, the truth about the murdered young Creole woman, the truth about her beloved father, and her mother's well-kept secret regarding her own identity.

Ashley comes from "old money" and has led a pampered life. But her life is changing and she is becoming stronger as a result.