Murder in the Garden District

Murder in the Garden District
A Chanse MacLeod Mystery

Greg Herren

Behind the beautiful facade of a Garden District mansion, a powerful political family's secrets end in murder. With another major hurricane heading towards the Katrina-ravaged city of New Orleans, it's up to Chanse MacLeod to dig through decades of murders and cover-ups to find the truth before more lives are ruined....including his own and those close to him.

About the author

Greg Herren is the award-winning New Orleans author of ten novels, including four in the Chanse MacLeod series. His Murder in the Rue Chartres won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men’s Mystery. Herren is also co-editor of Love, Bourbon: Reflections of New Orleans, among other anthologies. He can be reached at gregwrites@gmail.com.

Praise for Greg Herren

"Greg Herren give the reader a tantalizing glimpse of New Orleans."—The Midwest Book Review

"A smooth, savvy addition to the annals of New Orleans literature."—Julie Smith, Edgar Award-winning author

"The most honest depiction of post-Katrina life in New Orleans published thus far."—New Orleans Times-Picayune

Interview with the author

Q: This new Chanse mystery is set against the backdrop of both Louisiana politics and a hurricane evacuation. Why did you decide to do this?

A: Ever since I moved to Louisiana a million years ago, state politics have fascinated me. I’d never really found politics to be particularly interesting before that—my mentality was it didn’t matter what party the liar belonged to, they all were liars—but it was a completely different animal down here. From state-wide politics, I became more interested in national politics, with the end result I served an eighteen month term on the board of directors for the National Stonewall Democrats, and I learned so much about the whole process and how things work. I also got to meet President Clinton, which is still one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. After I stepped down from the Stonewall board, I decided to make my next Chanse book about a political dynasty—and we have plenty of them here in Louisiana. But the Sheehan family is not based on any of them.

As for the hurricane evacuation, well, when I was working on this book we had to evacuate for Hurricane Gustav last year. After Murder in the Rue Chartres and editing Love, Bourbon Street, I was kind of over writing about the whole hurricane experience. But then came the Gustav evacuation, and I realized one of the things I hadn’t really done in fiction was write about the days leading up to a hurricane evacuation and possible landfall. As we drove out of New Orleans that Sunday morning, I started remembering all kinds of things from the previous evacuation, and I also experienced that whole nervous tension you can feel in the air the days leading up to it, the same way we had before Katrina---and it just kind of fit in with the book I was writing, the mood I was trying to set. So, I did, and also realized that I risked getting skewered by critics for being the ‘hurricane guy,’ but it wouldn’t be honest to keep writing about New Orleans and never write about that situation again. It’s something we live in the shadow of every year from June to November, and it isn’t going to go away because people are tired of writing and/or reading about it. I am never going to stop writing about New Orleans, so….

Q: So, you always plan to set your books in New Orleans?

A: Well, not everything I write has been set here. The mysteries, certainly, and I have done a number of essays and short stories set here, but I also write about other places—but my heart is in New Orleans. I love this city, and I could easily write a hundred novels set here and never run out of subjects or inspiration. I mean, there are literally hundreds of novels set here, and more being published all the time—and no two writers see the city the same way, the same way no two people really see it the same way. I never get tired of reading novels about New Orleans, and I probably never will. It really is an amazing place, and I’ve not even scratched the surface. One of the greatest pleasures I get from my books is when locals tell me that I get the city right.

Q: Chanse seems to be coming to terms with a lot of the issues he’s dealt with in his life—was this something you deliberately planned, or something that came about after Hurricane Katrina?

A: I always intended for Chanse to grow and change with every book. Nothing is more boring to me than a series character who is exactly the same from book to book to book, because people aren’t stagnant—at least not the ones I know, or the ones I want to read about. We always grow and evolve and change, based on the experiences we have. I initially created Chanse as an incredibly damaged man, and wanted him to come to terms with the events of his past and the events of his present by growing and changing, by learning about himself and life through the cases he becomes involved in. Katrina accelerated that process for him—as it did for a lot of us New Orleanians—but I don’t think of it as a bad thing. You have two choices when you deal with something so horrific: you can withdraw yourself from the world and become bitter, or you can adapt, change and grow. And when you deal with something of that scope, when you finally come out of it you realize how tenuous everything of this world is, and how rare and precious life really is. There might not be a tomorrow, so you have to grab on to life and squeeze every drop of joy from it you can every day. I’ve always felt that it would be horrible to look back at my life with regret—and Katrina certainly amplified that for me. I’d rather try and fail at something than never try at all.

Q: Well, now that you’ve covered politics, what’s next for Chanse?

A: If there is another Chanse, I am probably going to write about the Catholic Church in some way. New Orleans is the most Catholic city in the United States, and the Archdiocese here is much more powerful than the other archdioceses in the country. There has been some controversy here about the Archdiocese in the last few years, closing churches that have been around for over a hundred years, much to the chagrin and anger of the parishioners. There’s a murder mystery in there, and one that I would really enjoy researching and writing. I don’t know how the Archbishop would feel about it, but then again, I don’t really care. I also have another idea I want to explore, and I think I can combine the two subjects into one mystery.

Q: Will Chanse finally get a boyfriend, or is he destined to be a loner?

A: That answer would be in the next book.