Julie Smith (1) (1944–)

I love this series.

Rebecca is a criminal lawyer, and a sleuth on the side, and she's backed up with a wild assortment of interesting characters- including her dad, who preceded her as a brilliant criminal lawyer; her partner in their firm, another skilled lawyer with her own issues; their secretary, who is snarky and not necessarily competent but who makes great comic relief; and her boyfriend- a reporter that has a practice of disappearing right at the most inconvenient times. All these show more people are drawn precisely and with humor, and they have very individual voices.

The plot here was wonderfully twisty, and the ending pretty unexpected in its final twist.

Mostly, though, I just love spending time with these characters!

I'll be continuing with this series, definitely! show less

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in a boarding school? Now consider that said boarding school has very strict rules, and people who are....interesting. This is the situation that our main character Reeno finds herself in, and what ensues is a hilarious and intelligent romp of a story. Julie Smith has taken a few concepts that might seem a little, advanced we'll say, and woven them into a really fun story line. Complete with fantastically written characters and a nice dose of show more hilarity, Cursebusters was quite the read.

Reeno is one of those characters who steals the spotlight. To say she's impulsive is a bit of an understatement, but she makes up for it in motivation. See Reeno's sister is really ill, and Reeno knows that the one thing that can save her is way out of her family's price range. So she sets off for a heist and, through an interesting turn of events, ends up in boarding school. However what I loved about Reeno is that she didn't let this phase her, instead she took it as a challenge. In fact, she does that a lot throughout the book. Reeno isn't a girl who is going to take anything lightly. If she has the power to fix or change it, she will. Awesome right?

Pair her now with my favorite character, the wise-cracking and slightly stand-offish A.B. This darling cat, and don't let him catch you saying that or he'll swipe at you, just so happens to be the key to everything that is going on with Reeno. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for us, that means they spend a lot of time together. Their banter is hilarious and it was by far my favorite part of the book!

Story wise, Cursebusters was a little confusing at times. I understood the overall plot, and you can definitely tell that Julie Smith did her research while writing. Her time travel and astral projection explanations are deep and extensive. When these concepts finally come into play in the book, there is no way that you won't understand how they tie in. However they are definitely a bit on the heavy side sometimes, and although I loved A.B. with all my heart, a lot of what came out of his character was explanation. I think I would've liked a little more action! Which is probably why I loved the end half of the book. Once everything is in place, things pick up and Reeno is out there kicking behind! Who doesn't love a girl with a strong personality and the ability to kick bad guy butt?

As a whole, I really enjoyed reading Cursebusters. I wouldn't say that it was exactly what I expected when I first went in, but honestly sometimes that is a good thing. The chemistry between Reeno and A.B. is fabulous, and if you are a fan of sweeping scenes and time travel you'll love this book! I'd definitely recommend you give Julie Smith's book a try! A butt kicking heroine and a snarky cat? How can you go wrong? show less

By now, this series of Noir stories is getting close to 100 books. This is the first I have read. I was a little hesitant to pick it up, given that the idea of “classic noir” to me means noir writing from the classic days starting in the 1930s. Some of the stories in this collection go much farther back, the first a very short story by Armand Lanusse from 1843.

All of the stories take place in and around New Orleans — there’s even a crime map style illustration, showing the stories’ show more primary locations. The working definition of “noir” is, as you might think from the reach back into the nineteenth century, broad. Several of those early stories are particularly concerned with untenable racial relationships in old New Orleans — lives that can’t go forward, as in Grace King’s “The Little Convent Girl”, because the structure of racial relationships close in around them to cripple them.

That feeling of inevitable doom is often at the heart of noir stories, and I think that’s the common element that draws these stories together. They don’t all share that hard-beaten urban feel we associate with noir — they aren’t stories that take place in city bars at night. They aren’t all full of lives shaped by crimes that dig a whole the characters can’t dig out of. But they do have the background music of fate carrying the stories forward to endings that are unhappy but that draw our empathy.

The book is divided into three sets of stories, by the dates of their writing. The first four are those stories going back to the 1800s, including, along with the stories by Lanusse and Grace King, ones by Kate Chopin and O. Henry.

The second set goes from the 1940s through to the beginnings of contemporary noir in the late 1970s. This also includes some authors whose fame is not necessarily noirish — Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams are the authors of the first two of the five in this set.

The last is contemporary noir, beginning with Ellen Gilchrist’s 1978 story, “Rich”, and including well-known current writers like James Lee Burke.

The New Orleans feel in the stories is supplied by the neighborhoods, the bars and clubs, the peculiar racial history of New Orleans — not the history framed by agricultural slavery but the complex structures of urban society that, so far as I know, are unique to New Orleans’ history — and the music and cultural life of New Orleans. It’s a very different noir than the noir of New York City.

I think the book works. Like I said, I had some hesitations about it. So long as you don’t require your noir pure and pulpy, you’re free to focus on the uniqueness of New Orleans life, and the very good writing in bite-sized pieces by some great writers. show less

Apart from the notion, as the anthology title would have you believe, that these stories are “classics” (they’re not; they’re simply reprints), “noir” (there are very few of your typical hard-boiled, cynical, noir-ish characters to be found), and related to New Orleans in some way (some of the writerly connections are tenuous at best, and several of the stories offer only the barest trace of a New Orleans setting), this is an enjoyable collection of mostly good and even a couple show more of great stories. My favorite by a long stretch is James Lee Burke’s masterful “Jesus Out to Sea.” One of the reasons I like reading anthologies is the satisfaction of finding an interesting writer I was previously unfamiliar with; I will definitely be seeking out more of Burke’s work. Other stories I was impressed by: Nevada Barr’s “GDMFSOB,” Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s “Pie Man,” and Tennessee Williams’s notorious, if something short of classic, “Desire and the Black Masseur.” show less