Wages of Sin by Pene­lope Williamson (2004) is a book I’ve been want­ing to read since fin­ish­ing “Mor­tal Sins” years ago. The series mainly fol­lows homi­cide detec­tive Daman Rourke and his movie star girl­friend, Remy LeLourie.

In the first book, “Mor­tal Sins,” the story was about a Hol­ly­wood star, Remy Lelourie, return­ing home to New Orleans and fac­ing mur­der charges. Her for­mer lover, Daman Rourke, was the lead inves­ti­ga­tor on the case and the one who exon­er­ates her to the dis­gust of his part­ner, Fio. Now, six months later, after get­ting his woman back, Rourke is inves­ti­gat­ing the mur­der of a priest that promises to reveal the dirty lit­tle secrets of some pow­er­ful peo­ple, rich and poor alike.

New Orleans comes vibrantly to life thanks to Ms. Williamson’s imag­i­na­tion. The story mainly takes place dur­ing the late 1920’s. When I think of New Orleans, the first thing that comes to mind is the music, the speakeasy’s and the flam­boy­ant parades that New Orleans has made pop­u­lar. My opin­ion is that the author did an excel­lent job of bring­ing to life the mul­ti­cul­tural pop­u­lace that make up The City that Care For­got.

The story opens with the pov of a vil­lain who calls him­self Romeo. Well, Romeo seems to be a fan who is obsessed with Remy Lelourie, a pop­u­lar Hol­ly­wood actress. After watch­ing her for awhile, he decides to act on his psy­chotic ten­den­cies and sends her a note writ­ten in his own blood. What fol­lows after that are brief moments of mad­ness and twisted sex­ual per­ver­sions through­out the story. This guy is a real nut job and his nar­ra­tive was thank­fully brief.

Mean­while, Daman Rourke aka “Day” is pulled away from his girlfriend’s Hol­ly­wood party to go to a crime scene in the Quar­ter. A priest has been found cru­ci­fied on a cross­beam in the mac­a­roni fac­tory. It’s a place where even the hobo’s refuse to hang out. Father Patrick Walsh was a pop­u­lar priest and a polit­i­cal fire­cracker. His death exposes pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion within the vestry as well as open­ing up some well hid­den secrets that were eye-brow rais­ing within the community.

There are two threads in this story: one with the obsessed psy­chotic fan and the other with a mur­der and rapist tar­get­ing a fan club called The Fan­tas­tics. Are the two con­nected? You’ll have to read the book to find out. Even after 4 years post-publication, this book still reads pretty good. Like a fine wine, the story has aged well.

While the author tries really hard to remain true to the period, place and char­ac­ter — it was rather dif­fi­cult to read a thread where a young black kid, Titus Dupre, is sen­tenced to die in the elec­tric chair for the mur­der of a young white girl who was apart of the fan club. How­ever, the biggest crime in the view of soci­ety is that he was flirt­ing with a white woman.

Titus never says a word about his inno­cence or guilt because he knows that no one will believe him any­way; and even if he was found to have not mur­dered her, the fact remains that he did much worse, in society’s view, in think­ing that he could ignore the racial prej­u­dice of his time and dare love some­one with­out regard to the color of their skin.

How­ever, amidst all this psy­chotic, mur­der rapist killing spree, for­bid­den secrets and church cor­rup­tion, there is a sub­tle romance under­neath all of this gloom and doom. Unless you’ve read “Mor­tal Sins” then the romance will be some­what less that sat­is­fy­ing for you. Maybe.

Day and Remy are not mar­ried but their jour­ney to romance started in “Mor­tal Sins.” Of course they still enjoy their bouts of hot sex and Rourke (a widow with a young daugh­ter) is a very pas­sion­ate man. I liked him a lot because he is so angsty and reserved. He is a man who thrives on risks and loves being a cop and can often be found at a speakeasy play­ing the sax to blow off steam. The only con­flict the cou­ple seem to have is Remy’s career: he wants her to stay in New Orleans but he real­izes that mak­ing movies is a big part of her life and so he doesn’t ask.

I was drawn to Day because of his unpre­dictabil­ity and his love for his woman but he is not with­out his own per­sonal demons. He and his older brother, Paulie, grew up with a father who was a cop and a mean drunk. Their mama aban­doned them and left them at the mercy of their father. The paths the two men take is telling: Rourke went on to become a cop and his brother Paulie, went off to sem­i­nary school. The broth­ers don’t speak often and are some­what dis­tant. The two men, how­ever, meet again under less than ideal cir­cum­stances because Paulie and the mur­dered priest were liv­ing at the same rectory.

I could go on and on about this book but I won’t. If you enjoy tor­tured heroes then Day shouldn’t be a dis­ap­point­ment for you. If you like well writ­ten mys­ter­ies then you shouldn’t pass this book up. The story was com­plex with a set­ting that was equally as impor­tant and drawn out as the char­ac­ters them­selves. Some books are just “set” in a time or place and you are given no more detail than that but in here you know you are _in_ New Orleans because the author suc­cess­fully trans­ports you there.

The book gets high marks for plot­ting, cre­at­ing a mys­tery that was some­what dif­fi­cult to unravel. The author did a really good job of putting all the pieces together that ear­lier might have fooled you into think­ing or antic­i­pat­ing a dif­fer­ent out­come. I was some­what let down that I couldn’t fig­ure out who the bad guy was and I am always one to look for clues while I am read­ing. No such luck here.

As for dis­likes, I didn’t like how the story ended because it ended on a cliff of uncer­tainty. Of course I’m sure that Ms. Williamson thought she’d be able to write a another book in this series one day but alas, she has not. As for vio­lence, there is a exe­cu­tion scene in here that is very graphic so you’ve been warned. Also, there’s one explicit sex scene, a mod­icum of angst, some blues music and a lot of New Orleans cul­ture to keep you enter­tained. If you enjoy mys­tery with a romance as an added bonus, then pick up Wages of Sin. My grade, B+/B. It is avail­able a as a secure ebook at Fic­tion­wise and Ama­zon.