This image is the cover for the book Mardi Gras Murder

Mardi Gras Murder

Reverie turns deadly when a secret society of New Orleans elites is infiltrated by a killer in this classic 1930s mystery.

For years New Orleans has been enthralled by the secret society dedicated to Dis, Greek god of Inferno, whose membership of fifty is closely guarded from the press and whose rites burlesque the proud tradition of the city’s Mardi Gras festival. Lovely Cynthia Fontenay gives Dis a ball each year, with all members in attendance behind satanic masks and sinister robes of black and scarlet.

When murder strikes this charmed circle, a shadow is cast over the city. Homicide detective Captain Murphy once again enlists the help of Wade, a New Orleans journalist, to confront an investigation of fifty suspects. As their smoldering motives become front page news, the Crescent City awaits the finale of this chilling carnival of a case.

Gwen Bristow, Bruce Manning

Gwen Bristow (1903–1980), the author of seven bestselling historical novels that bring to life momentous events in American history, such as the siege of Charleston during the American Revolution (Celia Garth) and the great California gold rush (Calico Palace), was born in South Carolina, where the Bristow family had settled in the seventeenth century. After graduating from Judson College in Alabama and attending the Columbia School of Journalism, Bristow worked as a reporter for New Orleans’ Times-Picayune from 1925 to 1934. Through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, she developed an interest in longer forms of writing—novels and screenplays.

After Bristow moved to Hollywood, her literary career took off with the publication of Deep Summer, the first novel in a trilogy of Louisiana-set historical novels, which also includes The Handsome Road and This Side of Glory. Bristow continued to write about the American South and explored the settling of the American West in her bestselling novels Jubilee Trail, which was made into a film in 1954, and in her only work of nonfiction, Golden Dreams. Her novel Tomorrow Is Forever also became a film, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and Natalie Wood, in 1946.

Open Road Media