DOING THE DEVIL'S WORK

Fiction

Like having a cuppa with Conan

DOING THE DEVIL'S WORK
By Bill Loehfelm
308 pp. Picador

Reviewed by Alan Goodman

A nicely done who-done-it in the long tradition of who-done-its. The author, Bill Loehfelm, brings to New Orleans what Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly bring to Los Angeles and Arthur Conan Doyle brings to London. I don't sense the writing here has quite the bite, the tang of these more well-known mystery writers. But it certainly keeps the reader turning pages.

This book was my introduction to the lead character, Maureen Coughlin, who apparently made her first appearances in at least two previous mystery books by Mr. Loehfelm – The Devil In Her Way and The Devil She Knows.  One might better begin with the earlier works, as I felt at a disadvantage jumping into the life of Officer Coughlin somewhere in the middle of her third adventure, where her backstory was essential to the tale, but yet seemed a bit too veiled. 

Officer Coughlin is a rookie officer on solo car-patrol in a rougher section of New Orleans as the story opens. We feel her fear, her insecurities, as well as her determination to perform her duties courageously as she slowly drives through a neighborhood hostile to cops, and certainly to a lone white female cop. As is often the case in effective mysteries, there are a couple of threads stemming from seemingly separate crimes.

Coughlin is feeling her way on a personal level, as a cop on the streets, and a team player within the workings of the Police Department itself. There are cops who are honest and cops who are suspect here. The reader is teased with glimpses of who might be doing what to whom. And all the while the reader is offered a running tour of the city, its glitz and its less glamorous underbelly.

All the while amidst murders, suspects, action, and clues, Coughlin is working through some self-doubts on a personal level. And such an introspective moment shows Mr Loehfelm's easy way with language:

And what to do about Leary? Maureen had to do something. Right? Wasn't it her duty? Circumstantially, with what Dice had revealed, Leary had emerged as a viable homicide suspect. The Gage murder was Drayton's case. How much, exactly, was she in a position to tell him about Leary? Maureen believed the things the things that Dice had told her about the money and the pills and the razor blade and where Leary had come from. But Maureen also believed that Drayton wouldn't even take an interview with a tattooed homeless woman, if Dice could even be persuaded to give it, something that Maureen knew was very much in doubt.

So, if you've dared the freeways in Los Angeles with Mosley, bit into the Big Apple with Ellery Queen, tripped out through San Francisco with Dashiell Hammett, and shared a cuppa tea with Conan Doyle at Piccadilly Circus, you might consider driving the beat in the seedy side of New Orleans with Loehfelm.  

I recommend it.