Cat-eyed Trouble

Robert E. Skinner's follow-up to his strong debut novel Skin Deep, Blood Red, about a 1930s New Orleans nightclub owner passing for white, is even better than its predecessor. Wesley Farrell's "pale gold skin" hides a secret that he's afraid to let out, even though most of his friends and lovers are black, because "in Jim Crow Louisiana, any Negro blood rendered you something less than human." Farrell's mother was a Creole of color; his father, as he learned at the end of the first book, is a sympathetic white policeman (now a captain) named Frank Casey. "It was a difficult relationship to explain or define, because neither of them yet knew exactly how to treat the other"--especially when Casey knows that Farrell carries an Italian spring-blade stiletto and a German Solingen steel straight razor as regular parts of his expensive wardrobe. On the same day in 1938 that Israel Daggett, a former detective with the New Orleans Police Department's Negro Squad, is released from Angola Prison after being framed for the murder of a minor drug dealer, the body of his social worker lady friend, Lottie Sonnier, is found near Audubon Park. Farrell also knew the victim: "...ten years ago a hot fire had burned the air whenever they'd been together." Equally hot is the "cat-eyed trouble" of the title, a beautiful and extremely vicious killer named Stella who proves to be a formidable opponent as Farrell, Daggett, and Casey sift through a creepy and dangerous crew of white and black villains to get to the truth. Skinner, a librarian at Xavier University, uses his talents as a writer and researcher to vividly recreate the clothes, music, and social divisions of the period.


Genre: Mystery