Jazz Funeral — Julie Smith

Homicide detective Skip Langdon finds herself smack in the middle of a sweltering New Orleans summer with a most unenviable case: the stabbing death of the universally beloved producer of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

But it's not only the dead that Skip has to worry about. The victim's sixteen-year-old sister has disappeared, and Skip suspects that if the young woman isn't herself the murderer, she's in mortal danger from the person who is. 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....