Murder in the Garden District

Wendell Sheehan is found murdered. His mother's fingerprints are on the gun and she admits having fired it when she found the gun by the body. But she insists her daughter-in-law did the deed. She hires Chanse MacLeod to investigate in the hope that he will find enough evidence to cast doubt on her daughter-in-law's guilt so that no-one in the family will be convicted.

The cover does rather lead one to suspect lurid revelations about the deceased which did not happen (well, there were lurid revelations, just not the ones the cover implies) but nevertheless a fun read. Some unfinished business from earlier books in the series which I read so long ago I only had a vague memory of them but there was enough context for it not to matter

A politician is shot in his own home and the matriarch of the family is holding the gun. She however is the one that hires Chanse to investigate the murder professing her innocence and insisting that he find someone else to pin the murder on. We learn that the politician was not a very nice man. Nor really is his family. There have been a few "accidental" deaths in their pasts as well as affairs and other assorted untoward things that a politician shouldn't have in his history. We see more of Chanse's assistant Abby in this one. Many of the side characters Paiges, Venus and Blaine play lesser parts in this book. There's also a looming hurricane in the gulf that slowly works it's way into the plot.