Fatal Cajun Festival

Now that Maggie Crozat and Bo Durand are officially engaged, everyone in Pelican wants to know when they will set the date. In Fatal Cajun Festival by Ellen Byron, Maggie and her family are too busy with festival season to think about planning a wedding. (Fatal Cajun Festival will be released on September 10 by Crooked Lane Books.)

When Grandmere decides Pelican needs a festival to precede the New Orlean's Jazz & Heritage Festival, she ropes Maggie into helping her organize Cajun Country Live! The featured artist is none other than hometown-girl-makes good Tammy Barker. Tammy has hit the bigtime as the winner of a TV singing competition, but to many in Pelican, she is still the diva she always thought she was. This includes Maggie's best friend Gaynell Bourgeois, who went to high school with Tammy.


Tammy's band is a collection of offbeat, weirdos who seem to have been randomly selected at the last minute to make the event. When a member of this motley crew is found murdered, Gaynell is suspected and Tammy seems to want to make it a permanent "vacation." There's always been bad blood between Tammy and Gaynell and it comes to a boil when Tammy sabotages Gaynell and the Gator Girls' audition for Jazz Fest.

Maggie decides the best way to discover information is to go undercover as a "newly-unengaged" woman and flirt with the band members. When another band member is seriously injured, Bo thinks it's about time for Maggie to become his fiancee again and stay out of trouble.

The flavor of this book is so Louisiana Cajun and you can almost smell the delicious food simmering on the stove and hear the foot-stomping music in the background. I love these books; they always make me miss New Orleans and everything Cajun.


Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley for a fair review. 

Mardi Gras Murder

It's nearly Mardi Gras time in Pelican, Louisiana, but one thing not on the list of festivities is a dead body. In Mardi Gras Murder by Ellen Byron, Maggie Crozat is in the thick of an investigation. After a flood plants the body of a man behind her grandmother's house, Maggie tries to discover who is was. When it is learned the body found after the flood was murdered, not a drowning victim, the police get involved. (Mardi Gras Murder will be released on October 9).

The flooding has delayed the opening of the controversial opening of the Louisiana Orphan Train, a little-known piece of history. Battle lines are drawn between those who do not want the exhibit to open and those who feel is is necessary to tell the story of the past.


One of the opposed is Gerard Damboise, head judge of the Miss Pelican Mardi Gras Gumbo Queen contest and self-proclaimed president of the St. Pierre Parish Historical Society. A fussy man who believes his heritage entitles him to be in charge.

When Gran backs out of being a judge for the contest, Maggie is coerced into taking her place. Gerard is vehemently oppose to the Orphan Train exhibit and tries to delay its opening. He is opposed to telling people about the grimy undergarments of the poor immigrant children who came from the Lower East Side tenements of New York on the Orphan Train. This offends his gentile southern sensitivities.

Not everyone agrees and someone decides to kill Gerard. As Maggie is driving home, she discovers him driving erratically and when they both stop, he tumbles out of the car. With Pelican residents in full Mardi Gras preparation, and Maggie's dad in overdrive, this is a difficult time to be investigating.

As usual, Ellie Bryon adds just the right amount of spice to her gumbo and makes Mardi Gras Murder an enticing mystery. Laissez les bon temps rouler.

For a review of the previous Maggie Crozat book, A Cajun Christmas Killing, click here.

Purchase link 

A Cajun Christmas Killing

Another fun caper starring Maggie Crozat and her lively family by Ellen Byron. In A Cajun Christmas Killing the Crozats are in the thick of building the traditional structure for the bonfires along the river. Over the years the bonfires had evolved into a tradition of lighting the way for the Cajun Santa Claus, Papa Noel, on Christmas Eve.

There's trouble at the family plantation. A hostile takeover by outside investors to purchase Uncle Tig's Preferred Property Collection unfortunately includes Crozat. The investment company is owned by Steve Harmon and coincidentally as the offer [s being crafted, bad reviews of the various properties begin to appear on the internet.

On the homefront, a strange unaccompanied man is a guest at the B&B and he is constantly taking notes. Maggie worries he might be a blogger and is planning to write negative reviews of the B&B.  Maggie tries to devise a plan to help her Uncle Tig, but runs across the very Steve Harmon

and he turns out to be her random guest, Don Baker. After a confrontation with just about everyone in the B&B and Maggie's boyfriend Detective Bo Durand, Steve Harmon is found dead in the men's parlor of Doucet Plantation.

Complicating matters is Maggie's ex-boyfriend from New York, in Pelican to try to reconcile. The Crozat family has a lot on their plate including Ty's trip to the hospital.

In charge of the investigation is Maggie's arch nemesis Rufus Durand and there are no end of suspects including the entire Crozat family and Bo.
 
A Cajun Christmas Killing is chock full of Louisiana flavor and plenty of bayou characters and traditions to make you feel as if you are there with them. Love these books. 

More Cajun Fun

Ellen Byron vividly describes Cajun country in this second installment of life in Pelican, Louisiana, Body on the Bayou. The larger than life Vanessa Fleer is finally marrying Rufus Durmand. Good thing because she is about to have his baby. 

When Vanessa's cousin Ginger arrives for the wedding, then is promptly murdered, it is up Maggie to find the killer and make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch. Inexplicably Maggie has been drafted as maid of honor for Vanessa and is assigned a long list of tasks to complete before the wedding. Each day more gets heaped on her. 

Adding to her stress is the arrival of her sort of boyfriend Bo's ex-wife who confides in Maggie that she wants to reconcile with her ex-husband, They have a special needs child and Maggie is sure she will lose in this battle for Bo. 

Another murder puts Vanessa behind bars on her wedding day and turns Pelican upside down. Fun, crazy exploits with a cast of characters you would love to know. Maggie has the patience of a saint to deal with maid of honor duties.

The first book in this series is Plantation Shudders. Check the review here. 

Cajun Country Mystery

Plantation Shudders by Ellen Byron is perfect for fans of everything Louisiana. It has eccentric aristocrats, aging plantation homes and so much local color you'd think you were actually in Cajun Country.

Magnolia Crozat better known as Maggie returns home to help her parents run their ancestral home as a B&B. The latest group of visitors includes an Australian family of four, the Cajun Cuties (a group of Cajun Country wannabes), a hipster couple celebrating their anniversary, three Georgia frat boys, a single man and an elderly couple celebrating their honeymoon. When the elderly guests die simultaneously Maggie's family tumbles into the spotlight of the investigation.

Naturally there is a feud going with the police chief and Maggie's family, so Rufus Durand would love nothing more than to embarrass the Crozat family with a murder charge. Arriving on the scene is a new police detective who looks like he has a brain in his head. Unfortunately he is related to Rufus. The plot thickens.

As a huge fan of New Orleans and Louisiana, I loved the local
color and look forward to the second book, Body on the Bayou which comes out on September 13.