Book overview
In New Orleans, lunch is a sacrament--and some sins are served course by course.
Every Thursday at a storied Uptown restaurant, four friends gather for long lunches steeped in cocktails, gossip, and ritual. Louise Bernardi, practical and perceptive; Sister Mary Michael Reese, a nun with a sharp tongue and sharper instincts; Monroe Hartwell, a charming attorney with a taste for intrigue; and Sally Claiborne, wealthy, theatrical, and impossible to ignore have shared decades of history and more secrets than they care to admit.
When a well-connected woman is found dead under suspicious circumstances, whispers ripple through the city's most polished circles. Soon, an earlier "accident" no longer looks accidental, and the group begins to see a pattern no one else wants to acknowledge. In a world of political dynasties, second marriages, ambitious daughters, and carefully cultivated reputations, the truth is as layered--and as dangerous--as a multicourse Creole meal.
As lunches stretch on and bodies begin to fall, alliances are tested, motives are exposed, and New Orleans society reveals its most treacherous truth: Beneath the manners, money, and martinis, everyone is hungry for something--and someone is willing to kill to get it.
Rich with wit, atmosphere, and sharply observed Southern characters, Death Over Lunch is a darkly comic mystery about power, privilege, and the deadly cost of keeping up appearances.