Wages of Sin — Penelope Williamson

Even for 1927 New Orleans, a city that has seen the utmost in sanctity and sin, the story is shocking. Beloved priest Patrick Walsh has been murdered. The scene of the crime: an abandoned warehouse. The method of killing: torture. Even more shattering are the secrets he had hoped to take to his grave.

Daman Rourke, the homicide cop who fights hard and hurts easy, wants a righteous justice for this one. But he has to walk a fine line of danger in a town already seething over the pending execution of a black man and the disappearance of teenage girls devoted to Remy Lelourie, silent-film queen and Rourke's lover. Seeking the blood-red thread that connects these events, Rourke rediscovers an unforgettable truth: some things stay mysteries, especially when they live in the human heart.