Publishing a novel about a giant hurricane hitting New Orleans eleven months after the very real Hurricane Katrina is a dicey undertaking. But Bonansinga pulls it off with grace and reverence for the Crescent City—especially since, according to the novel's foreword, he turned in the first draft one month before
Katrina hit. The chills don't stop with the novel's prescience. In his second leading role, stoic ex-FBI profiler Ulysses Grove comes to post-Katrina New Orleans for the funeral of a friend, professor Moses De Lourde, but finds a string of related murders—De Lourde's included—that compel him and former flame Maura County, a journalist, to team up and find the killer. After the pair do further research into De Lourde's secret theory tying hurricanes to ancient ritual human sacrifice, clues to the killer's identity emerge, and the case turns up links to Grove's past. As the city battens down for another disastrous storm season, Grove's chase is just beginning. Those who haven't read the previous Grove novel might find themselves playing catchup, but Bonansinga has a talent for painting suspenseful scenes in vivid colors, put to especially good use in the final showdown. (July)
