The Righteous Cut — Robert Skinner

December 1941: Jessica Richards, daughter of corrupt New Orleans councilman Whitman Richards, is the victim of a sensational daylight kidnapping. Richards is deliberately throwing the police off the case. Is it because the kidnapper is a familiar enemy, returned to settle an old score, or has Richards faked the kidnapping to further some aim of his own? The desperate mother turns to Wesley Farrell for help. Farrell, a Creole club owner passing for white, prowls the citys bars and streets, familiarizing himself with a growing list of Richards enemies while he tries to decide which of them might have the brains and guts to stage a coup against the corrupt councilman.