NO Quarter
"Summer seems an unlikely season for an elegy, butNO Quarter, by Robert Asprin (DarkStar, $15.95), serves as a final tribute to the sci-fi/fantasy/mystery novelist who passed away May 22, 2008, leaving his book in the expert hands of co-writers Eric Del Carlo and Teresa Patterson.And what a bang-up farewell he's given us! Set in the French Quarter of pre-Katrina New Orleans, this memory-haunted mystery follows the troubled life of Sunshine, a murdered waitress, and the friends devastated by her death. Bone, Sunshine's ex-husband, is so grieved that he bails from his table-waiting job to find her killer. Set almost entirely in French Quarter barrooms (except for the occasional brawl on Bourbon Street) the book introduces us to a splendid panoply of characters known only by their nicknames. Besides the pool-playing, movie- obsessed Bone, we meet Maestro, a fencing expert with a dangerous past (rumored to be based on Asprin himself); Rose, a tarot reader and voodoo practitioner; Jugger, a dim but huge ex-con; as well as Dunk, Bear, Werewolf, Firecracker, and Boogie Joe. Such is the strength of Asprin's writing that he makes us care about every single one of these troubled souls, right down to the feral street kids who would knife anyone just to break up the boredom of their day.Fascinating though these folks are, the true star of the novel is the French Quarter itself: historical, romantic, and dangerous. Asprin's sensuous descriptions bring the neighborhood alive with scents of hot asphalt, stale beer, sugared beignets, and bloated corpses. Temperance types might want to forgo its booze-soaked pages, but the only shortcoming in this love song to a cursed and blessed city is that (unlike New Orleans itself) it finally ends." --Betty Webb, Mystery Scene Magazine, 2010 Summer issue, #115 --Mystery Scene Magazine"Del Carlo and Asprin clearly understand the bar scene. And they definitely get the neighborhood. Theirs is not a vision of wrought-iron balconies scented with jasmine. This late-night Quarter has its stomping boots on." --Diana Pinckley, New Orleans Times-Pickayune, Sunday, April 11, 2010 --New Orleans Times-Pickayune"Okay, so when I received this book from the friendly folks at DarkStar Books, I wasn't sure what to expect. I certainly didn't think it was going to be a crazy whirl-wind tale of murder and intrigue in New Orleans. ... when Sunshine is knifed with an ice pick in a dark alley, Maestro and Bone set out to find the killer. This leads them on a wild adventure in which they discover a lot about themselves, about each other and they find just how low the underside of the French Quarter really hangs ... so, I say, go ahead and check outNO Quarter. I think you'll enjoy it."--Julia Scott-Douglas, Book News and Reviews --Book News and Reviews