Black Dust Mambo

Black Dust Mambo
Adrian Phoenix
Pocket, Jun 29 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9781439167878

Kallie Riviere enjoys her time at the New Orleans Hecatean Alliance’s carnival where she and other Hoodoo practitioners and Voodoo witches have fun and share experiences. She enjoys even more sharing her bed with Gage the nomadic outlaw biker conjurer with Gypsy blood and a fine butt (and other body parts). However, her euphoria ends abruptly when she finds Gage dead and soulless in her bed; triggering the memory from almost a decade ago when Mama fired a bullet into Papa’s head and tried to kill her too back in Bayou Cypres Noir.

In the present Kallie concludes she was the target of the killing soul sucker. With her best friend Belladonna accompanying her and covering her back, she fears for her childhood buddy Dallas, as she assumes he may be on the hit list too. The two BFFs search for Dallas while eluding a deadly malevolent being who wants to suck Kallie’s soul from her; and has no compunctions about doing likewise to Bella while Gage’s clan brother Layne seeks vengeance at a time when Lord Augustine is determined to possess Layne’s body in order to avoid having to leave this plane. More frightening is the clues lead back to her Tante Gabrielle who took her in when she became an orphan and has mentored her and her cousin Jacks in Hoodoo.

This super opening gamut in the Riviere urban fantasy hooks readers from the opening scene of finding her lover in bed dead and never slows down as the heroine believing she was the intended target of the Black Dust Mambo magic begins her inquiry. The support cast is solid though this is clearly Kallie’s star as Adrian Phoenix starts her new saga with a strong magical mambo murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner