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Book Review: Bill Loehfelm’s new crime novel

Photo courtesy Celeste Marshall

In Doing the Devil’s Work, his third book in the series featuring character Maureen Coughlin, Bill Loehfelm ups the ante. He depicts not just Maureen but New Orleans with a skillful subtlety. Now a full-fledged cop, Maureen is learning the ropes of policing Crescent City crime when she discovers a corpse in an abandoned house. As Maureen performs not-so-routine traffic stops, private security details and fledgling detective work, she navigates murky relationships among the city’s criminals, her fellow police officers and the city’s elite. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell who’s who and who she can trust.

Loehfelm thick paperback.cvbThe city’s police force has always been known for its extraordinary crowd control and corruption, and Loehfelm expertly depicts the gray areas of the job. Maureen is faced with ethical and legal slippery slopes as she tries to hold onto her passion to serve and protect while also being a team player her fellow cops can trust.

This is timely stuff, considering the recent public conversations about police brutality and the officer deaths in New York.

Maureen’s transformation into a police officer and her move to New Orleans are her second chance at a meaningful life, a chance to emulate the police detective who helped her in the first book, The Devil She Knows. As idealistic as she can sometimes be, Maureen is also fatalistic and stubborn. Watching her find her way makes for gripping reading.

Loehfelm’s Maureen titles have been compared to those of crime writers like Sue Grafton and Laura Lippman, who says, “Bill Loehfelm, a rising star in crime fiction, just keeps rising higher. … Maureen Coughlin is a hero for the ages.”

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