Danielle Arceneaux's First Glory Broussard Mystery

 

 

 

By Margaret S. Hamilton

 

 

“…when it comes to black women getting hurt or disappearing, folks look the other way. No one is working overtime for us. Damn, they ain’t even doing their jobs at a basic level. And I’m tired of it. No one is coming to save us. If we want the truth, we’re going to have to go out and find it.” (p.35)

 

 

 

Danielle Arceneaux’s debut mystery, Glory Be, covers a huge amount of ground in two hundred and fifty pages. Its small-town Louisiana setting might qualify it as a cozy, but it’s grittier than current cozies. Glory Broussard, a retired grocery store clerk, is a Sunday morning coffee shop bookie who places sports bets for clients. She suspects her lifelong friend Sister Amity’s recent death was murder, not suicide, and doesn’t trust local law enforcement to thoroughly investigate the suspicious death.

 

Glory’s attorney daughter, Delphine, turns up, fleeing both her marriage and a three-month suspension from her prestigious New York law firm. Delphine finds Glory’s life in a shambles: Glory is a recent divorcee mourning the loss of her mother, a hoarder facing eviction from her family home. Delphine clears out the house and uses her legal contacts to assist her mother’s investigation.

 

Arceneaux’s strong narrative voice is laced with humor and includes precise, evocative descriptions of the Lafayette area. Glory and Delphine encounter fentanyl trafficking, dog-fighting, and callous disregard for environmental regulations by a chemical company planning to build a new production facility.

 

Glory ventures where she’s never gone before: online dating sites, cold brew coffee with a splash of oat milk, and rescuing a stray cat. She goes undercover at a posh country club and sifts through the incriminating financial and legal information Sister Amity spent several years assembling. A devout Catholic, Glory resorts to consulting a medium for assistance in solving Sister Amity’s death.

 

Glory is a judgmental but respected senior citizen who tackles crime in her small corner of rural Louisiana. Arceneaux is off to a great start, with the second in the Glory Broussard mystery series scheduled for Fall 2024 publication.

 

Readers, do you enjoy senior sleuths? Writers, are you incorporating more seniors in your books and stories?

 

Margaret S. Hamilton writes the amateur sleuth Jericho Mysteries. What the Artist Left Behind is represented by Cindy Bullard, Birch Literary.

 

Photo: New Orleans Zoo