Last of the Red Hot Poppas

Investigative reporter and award-winning playwright Jason Berry presents Last of the Red Hot Poppas, a mystery novel following the consequences when the Governor of Louisiana is suddenly found dead. In search of the murder motive, a young attorney must navigate the tangled skein of local politics, following a trail that leads to diverse and dangerous locales ranging from a brothel in the swamps to Angola Prison to an isolated mortuary and amidst a dramatic capitol funeral. At the center of the intrigue are a cabal of ruthless oil brokers who heedlessly poison the land with their toxins, in this modern-day parable of greed and ruthlessness. Utterly absorbing from cover to cover.

You can smell the sweet rot of political corruption in Berry's novel like the stench of a bad oyster or a flooded New Orleans cemetery. This novel revolves around a dead man, but it couldn't be more alive if it got up and danced. Take a writer with a history of great political nonfiction and turn him loose on a novel and you have a gritty, spicy gumbo of a book, full of enough politics to satisfy a jonesing junkie along with all the suspense, sex, and colorful characters any lover of a good read could want. Underneath it all runs a dark current of moral and spiritual questioning that will leave you haunted.

In the wake of all the books about Katrina's devastation, this new novel about Louisiana is better than a breath of fresh air. It's pure oxygen. No, it's laughing gas. The dialogue of the state's spectacularly corrupt politicians is so perfect, I think the author is channelling them. And the depictions of the hard-hustling music promoters, the back-woods evangelists, and the poor folk victimized by the government's environmental racism make you feel like you've been zapped smack into the bayou state. Couldn't stop turning the pages or put the book down. A great, rollicking read.