No Second Chance: A Quentin Archer Mystery

At the start of Bruns’s richly nuanced third novel featuring New Orleans homicide detective Quentin Archer (after 2017’s Thrill Kill), Nick Martin, a 29-year-old truck driver, dies in 1992 when he drives off a road to avoid a head-on collision with another semi. The hijackers who arranged this trap steal Martin’s load of 800 cases of cigarettes. Flash forward 25 years to present-day New Orleans. The death of white police officer Johnny Leroy, shot at point-blank range in his squad car by a young black man, fuels racial tensions in the community. The reader knows it’s a revenge killing of some sort. With pressure from the mayor to solve the crime immediately and with no witnesses or clues to go by, Archer accepts the offer of love interest Solange Corday, a psychic and voodoo practitioner, to apply her esoteric skills to the investigation. They eventually un­cover a link between the hijacking and Leroy. Bruns clearly loves New Orleans and pithily inserts details of the city’s com­plex history and culture. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. (Mar.)