The Sunday Night Sex Show has been one of Canada's most popular shows on TV for years. Now here is your chance to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the show, its star and its programming. The author is the long time producer of the show, and close friend of the star, Sue. Who better to regale us with anecdotes about the show? Mr. Gulliver takes a light-hearted approach, and keeps the reader chuckling at the many hilarious calls and new products "screened" by the members of the show.

I found this book fun and easy to read, as well as giving me a closer look at the people involved with the show. I really enjoyed the many examples of real products sent for Sue to "test", and the interesting calls taken during the show. The book grabs your attention right away, and never lets it go.

I highly recommend this book to any fan (old or new) of the Sunday Night Sex show! Luckily for those of us in the US, this Canadian favorite is now available for us on cable.

Have fun and good reading!

The characters really pull you into this book They're so real...you get to know them and their quirks quickly. Rebecca Schwartz is a self-described "Jewish feminist lawyer" who becomes involved in a legal tangle over a top-secret sourdough starter sample. The tangle turns into murder, and Rebecca, her law partner, and her investigative reporter boyfriend are up to their necks in the action.

A good mystery with great characters...you almost hate to see it end! Fortunately, Julie Smith has penned a few other Rebecca Schwartz mysteries that are good reads, also. I just wish she'd write more!

The only redeeming thing for me is the pictures, which are cute, clever and full of detail to point out with your young child. But it's certainly not something I want my child reading on a regular basis. I thought I was being generous to give it two stars. ... Also, I'm surprised that it's recommended for ages 4-8. I'd have thought it was more appropriate for the 2-4 year old crowd. (Thought I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.)

As with most poets, Talba needs a day job to support her writing. Due to her razzle-dazzle preparation, she stuns elderly white male detective Eddie Valentino, into hiring her. He had braced himself to hire a nerd, but a "nerdette"? Eddie takes her along on what looks to be a pretty ho-hum case: finding out the identity of a man who has molested the client's daughter. The situation heats up considerably when a sure fire witness suddenly dies in a hit and run accident. Running concurrent with the investigation is Talba's emerging curiosity about just who and what her father was. Her entire family seems to be in mutual conspiracy to keep her in the dark about him.

The story has a good pace and is always colorful, but Ms. Smith does tend to overplot. She has such a long stretch about her father; I almost forgot the other mystery entirely. Actually, the two stories could stand alone and probably should have. The tie-in, as always, is the wonderful depictions of the star that grabs the spotlight: New Orleans. I can't think of anyone who captures the feel of this city like Smith does. "New Orleans Hotshot" is a nice welcome back for Julie Smith.

Spinning off a character from her latest Skip Langdon mystery "82 Desire", Talba Wallis, this book definitely ranks up there with Smith's Edgar Award winning "New Orleans Mourning". Talba Wallis, a self-described computer nerd, takes a job with private eye Eddie Valentino and soon becomes involved in a search for a mysterious man who has date raped a young teenage girl in New Orleans. Before long, the search becomes much more desperate as it appears that the young girl's friends are disappearing and dying.

Smith is a master of creating suspense and tension; this book is no exception. Complicating matters even further is Talba's decision to start looking for her own father, whom she doesn't remember. This causes her to reexamine her strained relationship with her brother and his wife; and her mother, Miz Clara, makes her displeasure very clear.

One of the strengths that Smith often displays in her work is her depiction of dysfunctional families and their fractured relationships. "Louisiana Hotshot" is no exception to this rule. Another strength is her obvious love of New Orleans. No other writer has ever painted such a perfect picture of New Orleans in their work; it's quaintness and strangeness can be difficult to describe on paper. New Orleans is as much a character as Talba or Eddie. Unlike a lot of other writers, Smith understands the importance of locale and local color, and she brings New Orleans to life on the page like no one else.

I, for one, hope that Smith doesn't go so long between books again...she is a national treasure, and a law should be passed requiring her to write a book per year.

bayou10

In New Orleans, a corrupt white police superintendent resigns and is replaced by an honest black man. The people have hope that the wide spread corruption will be swept away by the new top cop. Instead, the man is gunned down by a supremacist, who loathes the idea of a black running the police department. When the police, including Detective Skip Langdon, arrest the perp, The Jury assassinates him. Skip smells the evil odor of her old enemy, the psychopathic Errol Jacomine, as the mastermind behind The Jury. In a cat and mouse game where the stakes are Skip's life, the officer and the criminal must enter the other's head if they expect to win the fight.

CRESCENT CITY KILL is a classic good Vs evil battle with the villain being so alluring he obtains the support of good people. The intrepid heroine is forced to risk her soul in an epic war against the evil genius. This is an excellent novel in a superb series that fans will not want to miss.

Harriet Klausner

Skip Langdon, as our intrepid protagonist is almost likable. One is intrigued by her stature, her outsider status both professionally and personally and her personal history. However, Smith's creation seems to make so many mistakes and have such poor judgement that at times her low esteem seems justified. Her constant jealousies are distracting and in the end prove to be extraneous.

The multiple points of view add nothing to the plot nor the mood, and when the POV is not Skip's the story's momentum comes to a standstill. The story is full of sidelines and subplots which are then dropped and never brought to conclusion.

The final nail in the coffin for me was the two dimensional, not to mention offensively stereotypical depiction of homosexuals.

I'm trully surprised this book won any awards let alone the Edgar.

Yet Skip is a likeable, bright gal who knows New Orleans like an oyster knows his shell. She is on parade patrol at the height of Mardi Gras and is an eyewitness when the King of the Carnival, upper-crust businessman Chauncey St. Amant is shot while waving to the crowd from his float. In full view of the crowd, a person costumed as Dolly Parton has shot him from a balcony on the parade route. Pandemonium!

Rookie cop Skip is quickly assigned to the homicide team on the case because she "knows" these top-drawer people. (This seemed a little flimsy to me, but what do I know about the New Orleans Police Department?) Enter the St. Amant family, worthy of Tennessee Williams. Fragile, alcoholic wife, Bitty has a tenuous hold on reality; gay son Henry who adores his mother and loathes the late Chauncey; beautiful, perfectly mannered, but oh-so-wild daughter Marcelle; and loyal family friend Tolliver, who might be in love with Bitty, but then again might be gay. This tattered, aristocratic family takes over the book. Nothing is quite as it seems, and many twists and turns take place before the conclusion. Then we have another fillip of a twist that smartly reminds us of just what New Orleans is all about.

This is an engrossing story with a few too many side stories that however interesting, divert us from the main event. Ms. Smith has an excellent ear for dialogue and a good sense of the ridiculous; some of the incidents and confrontations are hilarious. I would call this a novel with a mystery thrown in. I would like to see a "straight" novel from Ms. Smith; I think it would be a success. "New Orleans Mourning" is a fun and instructive read.

But why, oh why is a book like this not considered a literary masterpiece? Some of the [junk] that is put forth by the
NY Times, the New Yorker, Oprah's Book Club, ad nauseum, is considered "top drawer," and yet we rarely hear about a brilliant detective novelist like Julie Smith being taken seriously by the "literary lights." I mean, it's very nice that she won an Edgar, but why not a Pulitzer? Her descriptions of New Orleans social strata are written with obviously great scholarship and at the same time are totally absorbing. I will say that New Orleans owes her a debt for the tourist trade a book like this will bring in. I can't wait to get back to that gorgeous city and scope out some of the "kultcha."

I am a reader of highbrow, lowbrow and no-brow, and I read three, four books a week or more. I'm also a writer. If I can turn out a book that comes close to being this entertaining, I will die happy.

Congratulations, Julie. You have written a great work. Now I can't wait to read the others in the Skip Langdon series. To begin with, she's a fabulous invention...nothing conventional about Skip. I imagine every woman who weighs more than the Vogue ideal will adore her. I must say, I thought another good title would have been..."Is Everyone In New Orleans a Drag Queen?" but I guess that would be considered too long. Anyway, for the film, I'd choose Ru Paul to play Skip, and the transvestite (sorry, forget her name) from "Midnite in the Garden of Good and Evil" to play Marcelle and Henry (different outfits, of course). After all, they'd have to be octaroon, or macaroon, or whatever.

Anyway, I've gotta go order "The Axeman's Jazz." I just love a twelve-step theme. Let's have more of it, Julie. Probably half the people who like to read about degenerate booze hounds and sniveling enablers are in recovery programs.

The book in my opinion is quite interesting, keeping your interest going to the last line. It is the first book of four, with "Mission of Magic", "Sage of Sare" and "The Wizard King" being the three sequels.

The 4 books being out of print, only used book stores might carry old copies, since, so far I haven't heard of any planned reprints.