The Whispering Room

Dear Reader,

You’ve seen the news reports from post-Katrina New Orleans. A police force in shambles. The breakdown of law and order. Citizens cowering in their homes after dark. The old and infirm preyed upon by roving bands of thugs.

For Detective Evangeline Theroux, it’s just another day in the Big Easy...until death becomes personal.

A body covered in snake bites is found in an abandoned house in the Lower Ninth Ward. A connection to a notorious child killer is eventually uncovered. Throw in a Pandora’s box of family secrets, murder and insanity, and you’ve only scratched the surface of Evangeline’s story.

Known as the Ghoul Girl because of the cold and emotionless way she approaches even the most gruesome crime scenes, Evangeline has worked hard to be accepted as an equal by her male colleagues. She’s aloof, analytical and tenacious—

traits that are sometimes at war with her Southern upbringing.

On a personal level, she’s a grieving widow and a single mother, the sister of an ex-con and the daughter of a couple whose forty-year marriage is disintegrating. But more important, Evangeline Theroux is a fighter. A survivor.

A woman who will not go quietly into the night.

And for me, the writer, she is a character who refuses to say goodbye.

Welcome to her world.

Amanda Stevens