Lineages and Lies — Jimmy Fox

In Lineages and Lies, Jimmy Fox has created an intricate, gripping tour de force of genealogical mystery-a worthy successor to his acclaimed first Nick Herald novel, Deadly Pedigree. Nick Herald doesn't go looking for trouble. Really. He's just a struggling, not-so-humble professional genealogist trying to make a decent, mostly honest, living in New Orleans, a city where masquerade is second nature, where for centuries secrets have grown on family trees like rotten fruit. Genealogy should celebrate life, allow us to pay homage to our forebears and their sacrifices. But that's not how things work in Fox's fascinating fiction: Nick invariably finds himself mired in murderous perversions of normally quite healthy curiosity about Louisiana family origins. Nick always expects to discover interesting and sometimes disturbing genealogical facts in the complex tapestry of the area's rich history. Clients usually take the good and the bad in their family trees with good grace. But Nick understands immediately that something more sinister is at work when an old friend and colleague is brutally murdered at a posh French Quarter hotel, and other gruesome murders follow. He vows to lift the veil of deadly mystery surrounding a lineage society whose members trace their ancestry back to a ship that sailed into colonial New Orleans. Is the Society of the Allégorie at the heart of the violence? Who is the killer? One of the many members, someone inside the society's bureaucracy, a frustrated applicant, or someone closer to Nick than he wants to believe? Working with his spunky, sharp-as-a-tack assistant, Hawty Latimer, and with a New Orleans police detective, Nick calls on his impressive research talent and remarkable investigative intuition to discover the truth that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden. A beautiful woman usually isn't far from Nick's thoughts and desires, and here it is an adorable blonde who seems to know more about the Society of the Allégorie than an innocent family-history buff should. Puzzle out the clues of the novel's nearly three-hundred-year-old mystery with Nick and Hawty, and thrill to the perilous scrapes Nick must extricate himself and his friends from in this suspenseful tale that will keep you guessing, make you laugh or gasp, and kindle your interest in genealogy, long after you've finished every scintillating, jewel-like chapter. Fox has again brought us a dramatic, moving, unusual tale that brilliantly showcases his sophisticated take on the amateur-sleuth genre. His trademark sardonic wit, deep knowledge of the genealogical field, and crime-fiction mastery make Lineages and Lies an unforgettably excellent reading adventure!