cover image Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans

Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans

Joe Bosco, Joseph Bosco. William Morrow & Company, $23 (575pp) ISBN 978-0-688-10889-2

Janet Cannon Myers, a 26-year-old suburban New Orleans housewife, had two children, a husband and a lover when she was beaten to death with a baseball bat on February 24, 1984. Bosco ( The Boys Who Would Be Cubs ) opens his first true-crime thriller with the verbatim transcript, covering more than 10 pages, of Kerry Myers's call to the sheriff's office reporting that his wife had been murdered by her unemployed lover, Bill Fontanille. Investigating officers were suspicious: Myers claimed that he had just fought with the murderer, yet his wife had been dead for hours; police found one of the couple's sons badly beaten and lying in a closet. Bosco searches everywhere for information about this case and notes everything he finds from police reports, interviews, psychic readings and even the victim's diary. The author's research can be overwhelming at times, but the story, particularly as it unfolds at the trials of the husband and lover, holds one's interest. Fontanille's first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, but six years later he and Myers were each convicted of the murder in separate trials. They are now serving sentences of 20 years and life respectively. Photos not seen by PW . (Nov.)