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Review by Sandy Huseby
Mardi Gras builds to its climax just as inexorably as tension builds in Sandra Brown's newest suspense novel, "Fat Tuesday."
For Burke Basile, New Orleans cop, the legal system proves a fickle ally. When criminal defense attorney Pinkie Duvall succeeds in gaining an acquittal for his client, Burke is driven outside the law to a daring crime.
Burke blames Duvall for the acquittal of Wayne Bardo, on trial for the murder of Burke's partner in a raid. He is convinced Duvall is a major operator in the sleazy underworld of New Orleans drugs and crime with Bardo as one of his henchmen. Burke also believes that someone in his own department is working for Duvall, leaking information that keeps the powerful attorney one step ahead of the law. Unable to touch Duvall through legal means, Burke leaves the New Orleans police force determined to exact revenge against Duvall.
And what better way to exact revenge than by taking Duvall's most prized possession: Remy Duvall -- wife in name, she is actually prisoner, concubine, display model, collectible object. Remy has secrets of her own, and it's through one of those secrets that Burke finds the way to kidnap the well-guarded woman. Remy has sacrificed her womanhood to Pinkie Duvall to assure that her younger sister will have a better life than she. Even Flara, sequestered within the walls of a convent school, is not safe from the depths to which Pinkie Duvall will go in his quest for unstoppable power.
For years, Burke has been a powerful adversary for Duvall. Now, his kidnapping plan draws Duvall's men deep into the territory that Burke knows best, the Louisiana swamps.
Brown weaves a taut, seamless tale of nonstop action, with twists and turns as thrilling and terrible as the swamps, and as decadent and colorful as the French Quarter at the height of Mardi Gras.
"Fat Tuesday" is a revel not to be missed.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.