The truth is I was bored and needed something—anything—to do, so the inheritance came at just the right time.

My name is Valerie Cooper and the rest of my life loomed large, an endless string of empty days and lonely nights, forever and ever, amen.

I never realized just how big my old house in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans was until my twin boys left for college at LSU in August. That drive back from Baton Rouge on I-10 was the worst hour and a half of my life. I missed the boys. I missed my husband, who’d been a fireman lost in the line of duty five years ago. (You never get over it, you just learn to live with it.) And when I got home—the house seemed cavernous. Empty. Quiet.

It still amazes me how much space two boys can take up. And yes, the house does seem to shrink on those rare weekends when they come home to see me and our cat Scooter, fill up on home-cooked food, and do their laundry.

The neighborhood has changed a lot in the twenty years since my late husband and I bought the big house, right after we were married. The Irish Channel runs on the river side of Magazine Street—the Garden District is on the other side. Tony, my late husband, used to joke we “lived two blocks and three decimal points away from the Garden District.” Our neighborhood might not be as fancy, but I’ve always loved it here. We bought when the neighborhood was considered an undesirable part of town—like anywhere in New Orleans is “undesirable”—and did as much of the renovation ourselves as we could. The house kept me hopping after the boys were born—between taking care of them and working on the house it seemed like I fell into bed every night exhausted. Renovations are never over—especially in New Orleans. The climate here is brutal on wood—two adjectives you never want to use when it comes to wood is damp and wet. New Orleans has a tropical climate and all the bugs and birds and animals that come with it. A possum had babies in the attic once. Stray cats take up residence underneath the house, raised six feet from the ground in case of flooding. We have termites and cockroaches that fly and mosquitoes and gnats and fleas and horseflies.

But I was getting bored. And that big old house got lonely at night—and a bottle of wine and Turner Classic Movies can only take you so far.

I’d done all the things I meant to do once the kids were out of the house—cleaned out the attic, reorganized furniture, painted the back gallery—and needed to decide what to do. I’d dropped out of college to marry Tony—well, I dropped out when I got pregnant—and my best friend Lorna, who lives next door, was on me to either go back to school or to get a job. I’d invited Lorna and our other best friend, Stacia—a lawyer who lives down the block—over for dinner one night so we could drink wine, watch a movie, and try to figure out what an almost-forty widow with no education should do with their rest of her life when I remembered I needed to get shrimp, so I walked to the market on Magazine Street.

That was where I ran into Collette Monaghan, a dreadful woman I knew from the parents’ group at the boys’ high school. And when I got back home, there was a letter waiting for me from a lawyer, about an inheritance from an uncle of Tony’s I never knew existed. I thought I’d known all of Tony’s relatives…but was obviously wrong.

And nothing was ever going to be the same again.

A Streetcar Named Murder, A New Orleans Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: December 2022
Purchase Link

Blackmail in the Big Easy turns to cold-blooded murder in this debut cozy mystery perfect for fans of Jane K. Cleland.

When the mysterious letter arrives by courier, Valerie Cooper doesn’t know what to make of it. She’s become the beneficiary of her late husband’s estranged uncle’s will—a man she never knew—and inherited a majority partnership in the family’s company, New Orleans Fine Antiques. Valerie knows nothing about antiques, but she decides to learn the business and become an active partner. She’s also got her hands full fending off Collette, a woman who wants to sell the huge old house in the Irish Channel neighborhood Valerie and her husband painstakingly renovated.

Valerie isn’t interested in selling—but when her best friend Lauren, drags her to a costume party for the women’s Mardi Gras club, the Krewe of Athena, she stumbles over Collette’s body, a jeweled dagger sticking out of her chest. In a rush of panic, Valerie recognizes the dagger from her shop—and before she knows it, she’s become murder suspect number one.

Egged on by Lauren, she starts digging into Collette’s business dealings, and the deeper she digs, the dirtier it gets. Now all fingers are pointing at Valerie. In a desperate bid to clear her name, Valerie frantically tries to find who could have gotten hold of the dagger. But among a cadre of guests in full costume, it could be impossible to find the thief—and unmask the real killer.

About the author
T. G. HERREN is a pseudonym of Greg Herren, an award-winning author who has published over forty novels and fifty short stories. He is also the award-winning editor of over twenty anthologies, including the 2022 Bouchercon anthology, Land of 10000 Thrills. He lives quietly in New Orleans with his partner of twenty-seven years and their needy cat, Scooter.

All comments are welcomed.