Broussard & Franklyn Forensic Mysteries Series

Young and vibrant New Orleans criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn has just been assigned her most challenging case yet—a collection of victims with similarities that include driving old cars, humming nursery rhymes, committing murder, and then killing themselves! Welcoming the help of her jovial boss, chief medical examiner Andy Broussard, the two set out to solve the case, thinking only along strictly scientific lines. Not once do they consider the involvement of Black Magic, a New Orleans cultural staple, until an ancient Cajun sorcerer’s curse surfaces with an ominous warning: “Beware the songs you loved in youth.”

Andy Broussard, the portly New Orleans medical examiner, obviously loves food. Less apparent to the casual observer is his hatred of murderers. Together with his gorgeous sidekick, psychologist Kit Franklyn, the two make a powerful, although improbable, mystery solving duo. When the beautiful Kit goes to meet an anonymous stranger—who’s been sending her roses—the man drops dead at her feet before she can even get his name. Game on. Broussard learns that the man carried a lethal pathogen similar to the deadly Ebola virus. Soon, another body turns up with the same bug. Panic is imminent as the threat of a pandemic is more real than ever before. The danger is especially acute because the carrier is mobile, his identity is an absolute shocker, he knows he’s a walking weapon and he’s on a quest to find Broussard. Kit isn’t safe either. When she investigates her mystery suitor further, she runs afoul of a cold blooded killer every bit as deadly as the one searching for Broussard.

New Orleans’s hugely overweight chief medical examiner, Andy Broussard, and his gorgeous assistant, criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, set off to investigate a series of violent murders. Examination of the victims leads to the discovery that each had their throat ripped out, as though they’d been attacked by something that wasn’t human. ‘Blood on the Bayou’ is written in Donaldson’s unique style: A hard-hitting, punchy, action-packed prose that’s dripping with a folksy, decidedly southern, sense of irony. Add in Donaldson’s brilliant first-hand knowledge of forensics along with the sultry flavor of New Orleans, and the result is a first class forensic procedural within an irresistibly delectable mystery.

It’s a bizarre case for Andy Broussard and Kit Franklyn. A man is found in Jackson Square, stabbed, one eyelid removed and four Scrabble tiles with the letters KOJE on his chest. Soon, there’s a second victim, also stabbed and devoid of one eyelid, but this time with only three letters on his chest, KOJ. Does the missing letter mean there will be two more victims and then the killer will cease, or is he leading up to something bigger and deadlier? Broussard and Kit use their respective disciplines to profile the killer, but it quickly becomes clear that the clues and objects they’ve found are part of a sick game that the killer is playing with Broussard; a game most likely engineered by one of the hundreds of attendees at the annual forensics meeting being held in New Orleans. Has Broussard finally met his match?

Among the dead collected in ‘The Big Easy’ floodwaters after hurricane Katrina are three nude female bodies, all caught in the same brush tangle, none with water in their lungs. No water. Medical examiner, Andy Broussard, knows this was not an act of God; not the work of Katrina. There’s a killer on the loose and by God, Broussard means to find him. But Broussard has perhaps the biggest challenge of his colorful career. The city and all its records are destroyed, practically the entire population is scattered, the police force has no offices, and many of the rank and file (who haven’t defected) are homeless. And if that’s not bad enough, Broussard discovers that the bodies were all once frozen solid, completely obliterating key forensic clues. Soon, Broussard and his alluring assistant, Kit Franklyn, are on a dangerous and labyrinthine journey through the obscenely damaged, ever mysterious, irresistibly seductive, city of New Orleans; leading them to a kind of evil that neither of them could imagine.

Andy Broussard, the plump and proud medical examiner for the City of New Orleans, is sitting almost in the kill zone of a too-close-for comfort and ‘in living color’ murder of his Uncle Joe Broussard at a family picnic in Bayou Sauvage - the largest urban wetlands park in the USA. Surprisingly, the murderer then immediately commits suicide. After easily determining the killer’s identity from the driver’s license in his pocket, the only remaining task for Broussard and the police is to uncover the motive for such a heinous act. But suddenly, everything about the case takes a bizarre turn. Caught short handed because of an NOPD work slow-down, and needing someone to find out what happened to a young woman who has just been reported missing, Homicide Detective Phil Gatlin deputizes Broussard’s beautiful death investigator, Dr. Kit Franklyn, and assigns her to that case. Shockingly, Kit’s efforts soon lead back to the murder of Uncle Joe. Sensing a plot of horrendous magnitude, Broussard directs his colleagues and friends in a race to uncover the truth behind the most audacious Andy and Kit mystery of the entire series.