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Skip Langdon

This page lists novels that feature the New Orleans police officer Skip Langdon.

 

Skip Langdon: Novels

New Orleans Mourning

Julie Smith

St. Martin's Press

1990

A Skip Langdon novel.

"It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and civic leader and socialite Chauncy St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a parade-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Is the killer his aimless, promiscuous daughter Marcelle? Homosexual, mistreated son Henry? Helpless, alcoholic wife Bitty? Or some unknown player? Turns out the king had enemies... Enter resourceful heroine Skip Langdon, a rookie police officer and former debutante turned cynic of the Uptown crowd. Scouring the streets for clues, interviewing revelers and street people with names like Jo Jo, Hinky, and Cookie, and using her white glove contacts, the post-deb rebel cop encounters a tangled web of brooding clues and ancient secrets that could mean danger for her—and doom for the St. Amants."
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The Axeman's Jazz

Julie Smith

St. Martin's Press

1991

A Skip Langdon novel.

"For detective Skip Langdon, the murder of a multiple self-help group members is no fun. Even if the guilty character is claiming the mantle last held by the Axeman, a notorious New Orleans serial killer of seventy years ago. Yet as Skip threads her fascinated way from one self-help group to another, she finds she has more in common with the twelve-steppers than just the murder. And she knows what they do not: that among their anonymous numbers is a deadly murderous, and dangerously attractive - psychopath."
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Jazz Funeral

Julie Smith

Fawcett

1993

A Skip Langdon novel.

"Smack in the middle of the summer, Skip finds herself investigating the stabbling death of the universally beloved producer of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Then the victim's sixteen-year-old sister disappears, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn't herself the murderer, she's in mortal danger from the person who is. And with her long-distance love, Steve Steinman, and her landlord, Jimmy Dee, to assist her, Skip trails an elusive killer through the delirium of a city caught up in the world's most famous music bash."
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New Orleans Beat

Julie Smith

Fawcett/Columbine

1994

A Skip Langdon novel.

Subsequently published as Death Before Facebook.

"Skip Langdon is sent to investigate the death of thirty-one-year-old Geoff Kavanagh, victim of an accidental fall from a ladder. But as Skip pursues the case, he discovers an on-line computer community whose secrets may mean the difference between accident and murder, and among whose anonymous members a killer may be waiting to strike again at anyone who comes too close."
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House of Blues

Julie Smith

Fawcett/Columbine

1995

A Skip Langdon novel.

"After prominent New Orleans restaurateur Arthur Hebert is murdered in his beautiful Garden District home, three family members suspiciously vanish: Hebert's daughter, who was soon to have taken over the management of his restaurant, his ex-addict son-in-law, and his small granddaughter--all missing without a trace. A kidnapping gone wrong? Homicide Detective Skip Langdon thinks it's possible, but why should the kidnappers have taken three hostages when one would have been enough? Skip's hunt for a murderer and the missing Hebert heirs embraces worlds within worlds - the elegant, dangerous Garden District, the French Quarter, the seedy Treme, broken-down projects, exclusive mansions, and lowdown bars."
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The Kindness of Strangers

Julie Smith

Fawcett/Columbine

1996

A Skip Langdon novel.

"New Orleans is not a city, it's a world - exotic, sweetly perverse, dangerously seductive. Nowhere else does politics make stranger bedfellows; and the approaching mayoral election is stranger than most, pitting the usual thugs and vipers against a seeming breath of fresh air - Errol Jacomine, a liberal-minded, civic-spirited preacher. The only problem is, in the opinion of Police Detective Skip Langdon, Jacomine is a psychopath and dangerous as hell. On leave of absence from the police force, Skip becomes obsessed with exposing the frightening figure beneath Jacomine's good-guy image. Immediately, an anonymous army of spies and hatchet men go to work on her, and Skip begins to understand that in opposing Jacomine, she is risking not only her livelihood but her sanity and possibly the lives of people she loves."
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Crescent City Kill

Julie Smith

Fawcett/Columbine

1997

A Skip Langdon novel.

Subsequently published as Crescent City Connection.

"With a new, honest police superintendent, NOPD detective Skip Langdon feels there's hope for the city she loves. But no sooner does Superintendent Albert Good take office than he is gunned down by an assassin, and within hours the killer himself is killed. A mysterious entity calling itself The Jury claims credit for this act of vigilante justice. Who or what is The Jury? No one knows, but Skip perceives in it the evil brilliance of her old adversary, charismatic con man and cold-blooded killer Errol Jacomine. She's always suspected it's just a matter of time before Jacomine's megalomaniacal ego orchestrates his revenge. The time is now. From across the South, the players in the unfolding drama come together - a pretty college student on the run, a monk who has packed a lifetime's worth of misery into a few years, and a madman with a murderous agenda. Beautiful New Orleans gathers them all into her casual embrace, while Detective Skip Langdon races (perhaps to her own destruction) to forestall the bloodshed to come."
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Detective Duos: The Best Adventures of Twenty-Five Crime-Solving Twosomes

Editors: Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

Oxford University Press

1997

This anthology includes the Julie Smith story The End Of The Earth which features Skip Langdon.

The contents are:

  • The Purloined Letter (Edgar Allan Poe)
  • The Adventure Of The Empty House (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
  • Death At The Excelsior (P.G. Wodehouse)
  • The Puzzle Lock (R. Austin Freeman)
  • The Love Detectives (Agatha Christie)
  • The Sealed House (Hulbert Footner)
  • The Footsteps That Ran (Dorothy L. Sayers)
  • Pattern For Murder (Frances And Richard Lockridge)
  • Fourth Of July Picnic (Rex Stout)
  • Two Over Par (Kelley Roos)
  • One Morning They'll Hang Him (Margert Allingham)
  • Puzzle For Poppy (Patrick Quentin)
  • Once Upon A Train (Stuart Palmer And Craig Rice)
  • The Phantom Cry-Baby (Lawrence G. Blochman)
  • Phut Phat Concentrates (Lilian Jackson Braun)
  • Before She Kills (Fredric Brown)
  • And Start With A Blonde (Jack Webb)
  • The Road To Damascus (Michael Gilbert)
  • Dalziel's Ghost (Reginald Hill)
  • Interpol : The Case Of The Modern Medusa (Edward D. Hoch)
  • The Holes In The System (Marcia Muller)
  • The Desert Limited (Brill Pronzini)
  • Stop, Thief! (Barbara D'Amato)
  • The Adventure Of The Perpetual Husbands (Ellen Dearmore)
  • The End Of The Earth (Julie Smith)
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82 Desire

Julie Smith

Fawcett/Columbine

1998

A Skip Langdon novel. Talba Wallis also appears in this novel.

"Councilwoman Bebe Fortier has misplaced her equally prominent husband. Across town, part-time detective-poet Talba Wallis has a simple wish--to find out what Russell Fortier's disappearance has to do with her. But the private investigator who hired Talba to spy on Fortier can't help her out. He's lying in his office with a bullet in his chest. At first, Police Detective Skip Langdon thinks it's just a small case with some big names - until she senses something huge starting to unfold. Something rooted in corruption, resulting in violence - and motivated by that old demon . . . desire."
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Mean Rooms: A Short Story Collection

Julie Smith

Five Star

2000

A short story collection that includes stories that feature Rebecca Schwartz and Skip Langdon.

"From the high art of revenge in Fresh Paint to the depths of the Antarctic in The End of the Earth, this collection proves that Julie Smith is indeed one of those writers who never writes the same story twice."
The contents are:
  • Silk Strands
  • Grief Counselor
  • Where The Boys Are
  • Fresh Paint
  • Blood Types
  • Always Othello
  • Too Mean To Die
  • Montezuma's Other Revenge
  • Project Mushroom
  • Cul-De-Sac
  • Crime Wave In Pinhole
  • Strangers On A Plane
  • The End Of The Earth
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Mean Woman Blues

Julie Smith

Forge

2003

A Skip Langdon novel.

"The most dangerous man in the world is trying to kill her… That would be the Rev. Errol Jacomine, crazy as a fox that just ate a loon, and more dangerous than a cell full of serial killers. She’s Detective Skip Langdon, the New Orleans cop who’s twice smashed his criminal endeavors, yet each time he’s managed to slip away. Now he’s mad. In both senses of the word. And he has the connections to have her killed—or worse, those she loves. After one near-miss and several nasty threats, Skip is driven by fear that she’ll lose the people dearest to her. Despite finding herself disgraced in her own home town (Jacomine knows how to frame as well as kill), she goes on the hunt for a maniac with a gift for conning people and the extreme makeover to make it work."
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Meet Skip Langdon: Two Mystery Short Stories

Julie Smith

booksbnimble

2014

An electronic publication that combines two short stories that feature Skip Langdon: Always Othello and The End Of The Earth.

The End Of The Earth was originally published in the 1997 anthology Detective Duos. Always Othello was probably first published as part of a jigsaw puzzle / short story mystery.

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Murder On Magazine

Julie Smith

booksbnimble

2018

A Skip Langdon novel.

"Cody, the pink-haired sixteen-year-old, should be in school or at the mall texting her friends, not hanging out at the intersection of serial murder and human trafficking. When the options are: (1) Return to a life of slavery (2) Go to jail for murder (3) Be killed by a serial killer, Option 4 makes perfect sense - RUN! As mean as the streets of The City That Care Forgot can be, this child attracts angels (often unlikely ones) – and entire packs of dogs - who come to her aid. She also finds a friend in NOPD’s newest Sergeant - big (six-foot!), beautiful, tough, and tender-hearted Skip Langdon. Skip knows her best hope of finding the killer is to find Cody – plus she feels for the girl, in whom she recognizes a younger version of her plucky, resourceful, whip-smart self. The city’s hard-boiled; the detective has a heart the size of the Superdome."
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Last updated September 2018