Who Killed the King of Bling?

by Michael Druce

After inheriting the biggest Mardi Gras bead business in New Orleans from his late father, self-proclaimed King of Bling Ben Yaye becomes totally and completely intolerable. Ben’s wife Ondine, daughter Joletta, and twin brother Boo all quickly learn they no longer have any stake in the company. Then, Yaye estate groundskeeper Beggs and the housekeeper Lucy Anna find that their careers are being cut short and they’ll be unemployed in the not-too-distant future. Even Joletta’s boyfriend seems to be a target of ruthless Ben’s scorn before he dies in a mysterious boating accident! So when an otherwise healthy Ben Yaye drops dead from so-called “natural causes,” suspicions naturally arise, and Sheriff Red Baynes and Deputy Jasmine Rice arrive on the scene. (Save your N’awlins-flavored jokes, folks, as Baynes and Rice have heard it all before.) But what is new to the detectives is the swamp of lies and deception in which the Yaye family have found themselves wallowing. Everybody’s a suspect with means, motive, and opportunity in this Big Easy murder mystery that’s not so easy to sort out and even more difficult to resist.