The Neon Smile: A Novel [Hardcover]

Dick Lochte (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 1995

When Terry Manion, the New Orleans private investigator introduced in Blue Bayou, agrees to work for Pierre Reynaldo, the king of exploitation TV, he doesn't have a clue about what he's getting into. Reynaldo wants to reopen a case the police slammed shut thirty years ago -- the racially motivated murder of Tyrone Pano, a black militant leader. But the more Manion learns about the case, the more personal it becomes. Both Manion's father and his revered mentor, J.J. Legendre, had ties to Pano that might have been better left buried.

The Neon Smile takes the reader back to 1965, a fateful year for J. J. Legendre. It is then that Legendre, a young and cynical homicide detective, tackles both the Pano case and a series of brutal murders committed by a killer as clever as he is cold-blooded. Each victim is found with a voodoo doll, the signature previously employed by a nineteenth-century murderer known as the Meddler. Legendre connects past and present to end the Meddler's new reign of terror.

But things are never what they seem in the Big Easy, and three decades later Manion must make a couple of connections his mentor missed -- between the Meddler killings and the Pano case, between the violent unrest of the sixties and today's more subtle racial politics.

The Chicago Tribune thought Blue Bayou possessed "the same kind of energy and imagination as prime Elmore Leonard and even vintage Richard Condon." This time that energy and imagination combine for a fast-paced thriller that spans three decades of fear, corruption, and violence.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wrapping a 30-year-old investigation inside a contemporary case, Lochte (Sleeping Dog; Blue Bayou) more than doubles the cerebral challenges and literary pleasures in this second appearance of New Orleans PI Terry Manion. A self-described "Henry James sort of guy in a Howard Stern world," Manion is hired by a TV producer to unearth details of the 1965 story of black militant cult leader Tyrone Pano. But he finds himself holding the threads of a pair of mysteries once handled by his own mentor, J.J. Legendre. In a 34-chapter flashback, J.J. is seen embroiled in the ramifications of Pano's arrest for the murder of an FBI plant, while supposedly solving the serial murder case of the Meddler, an imitator of a Marie Laveau voodoo-era killer. As Manion exhumes this latter puzzle, he finds some of the principals still alive and lethal, busy covering their tracks in cases current and historical. Over a dozen richly drawn characters populate this story?from a madame-turned-PI to a black artist who renders Mona Lisa in neon?all set against the delightfully grotesque and corrupt backdrops of 1965 and 1995 New Orleans. Chockful of dark humor, wordplay and subtle clues, the novel is rich enough to reward multiple readings.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Like many police procedurals, this title utilizes the peculiar microcosm of a well-known city. New Orleans private detective Terry Manion, hired by a television producer to research the 30-year-old murder of a black cult figure's girlfriend, the man's subsequent jail suicide, and allegations of FBI involvement, gets the lowdown from a former madam turned private eye. The narrative that follows returns the reader to 1965 as it details undisclosed aspects of the murder (including machinations of a serial murderer) and convinces Manion of continued corruption. Exceptional, tightly constructed work, with great characterization, from the author of Blue Bayou (Ivy, 1993). For all fiction collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (April 5, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671747126
• ISBN-13: 978-0671747121
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,630,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

DICK LOCHTE is the author of a list of popular crime novels including SLEEPING DOG which won the Nero Wolfe Award, was nominated for the Edgar, the Shamus and the Anthony, and was named one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Booksellers Association. He is the author of the forthcoming crime novel, BLUES IN THE NIGHT and co-author with the Today Show's Al Roker, of the current mystery, THE TALK SHOW MURDERS. He had co-authored four popular crime novels with attorney Christopher Darden and has written screenplays for such actors as Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen and Roger Moore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great New Orleans detective thriller, August 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Neon Smile: A Novel (Hardcover)

Lochte writes about New Orleans like Chandler wrote about Los Angeles. He knows the city and the people and the talk. And he gives us two different mysteries rolled into one. Check it out.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mystery within a mystery, November 7, 2003

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Neon Smile: A Novel (Hardcover)

New Orleans private eye Terry Manion reluctantly takes on an assignment from a tabloid TV show to re-examine the jail suicide of a black radical, Tyrone Pano, accused of murdering a woman 30 years earlier.

The novel then jumps back 30 years. Manion's mentor, J.J. Legendre, an honest man shunned by the corrupt New Orleans police department, gets the Pano case while being locked out of the big news - a serial killer patterning his murders of women on a 19th-century killer called the "Meddler."

But the new Meddler witnessed the killing of the woman in the Pano case and takes a personal interest. Without seeing his face, the reader learns the killer is a man of position in the city and regards his killings as a means to an end.

When J.J. finally gets assigned to the Meddler case, he notices an anomaly that turns the investigation around. But as J.J. gets closer to the killer, the killer homes in on the cop's new girlfriend. After a riveting climax, Lochte jumps his novel back to the present.

J.J. is dead and Manion is discovering a few connections his old friend missed. The Meddler is still out there and he hasn't mended his ways.

Lochte takes a risk nestling a story within a story but makes it work. New Orleans is steamy, J.J. and Manion are both quirky individual presences and the action reaches climactic heights twice.