Assassination at Bayou Sauvage

Donaldson once again takes us down to New Orleans in Assassination at Bayou Sauvage, the next installment in his Andy Broussard/Kit Franklin series. In this one, Dr. Broussard is faced with the murder of his family members and an unlikely villain, while Kit is graced with a badge of her own and given a missing persons case to pursue while the police are shorthanded due to a strike.

While the setting and medical details are excellent, I found the characterization of the major and minor characters to be shallow and full of stereotypes that distracted from the enjoyment of the novel. I also found the resolution of the mystery to be unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, including the fact that if the murderer had cracked as severely and for the reason stated, there should have been evidence scattered throughout the novel, which there was not. The secondary mystery in the novel also was not resolved at all but without setup for the sequel, which left me confused. So while the plot was at times engaging, the resolution and characterization of the cast left me with a lukewarm impression of the book as a whole.