Check out these offbeat mysteries in the Tubby Dubonnet series, by Anthony- and Edgar-nominated author Tony Dunbar. Tony Dunbar is the rare author able to make you laugh and shake in your shoes at the same time. Enjoy!
Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series)
Tony Dunbar
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
If a gym bag of cash fell into your hands, what would you do to keep it?
A simple man with a refined palate, maverick New Orleans lawyer Tubby Dubonnet has a penchant for fishing, Old Fashioneds, off-track betting, and fighting evil while passing a good time.
His clients are all renegades from the asylum (aka Orleans Parish), including a transvestite entertainer, a buxom deadbeat blonde, a doctor who refers his own patients to a malpractice lawyer, and a Mardi Gras reveler who drives a float shaped like a giant crawfish pot. He also has his hands full with an ex-wife and three teenage daughters, who are experts in the art of wrapping Tubby around their little fingers. And somehow, between work and family, Tubby finds time to sample the highs and lows of idiosyncratic Crescent City cuisine, from trout meuniere amandine and French roast coffee with chicory to shrimp po-boys and homemade pecan pralines.
Tubby’s new client is Darryl Alvarez, the manager of a local nightclub who’s been caught unloading marijuana from a shrimp boat. At their first meeting, Darryl entrusts Tubby with an ordinary-looking blue gym bag. But after Darryl’s unfortunate demise, Tubby realizes he must tighten his grasp on the gym bag — and its million-dollar contents.
Tubby can’t just give up the cash. But if he gets caught, he’ll be in jail. And if the wrong people catch him, he’ll wish he was.
Excerpt:
The pain that said he was drinking too much started creeping up behind Tubby’s ears. Raisin Partlow, his drinking buddy, had given up trying to make conversation with him and was puffing on a cigarette in the exaggerated way that irregular smokers do. The dusty, barely lit tavern was thinning out, leaving just a few whiskered pool players chalking up a last game and a pair of busty girls sharing confidences with the even heftier dame behind the bar.
“Never screw a client and never lie to the judge,” Tubby said abruptly.
It took Raisin a second to break through to the surface.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s all of the so-called legal ethics that make sense to me. The rest of it is just so many little rules you can twist around to suit whatever you want to do.”
“Well, you know, Tubby, I lied to a judge just last week.” Raisin expelled a wobbly smoke ring and smiled in satisfaction. “Old ‘Fuzzy’ Baer appointed me to represent the fool who shot a fourteen-year-old girl, after he raped her and her mother. He asks me, ‘Mr. Partlow, can you put aside your personal feelings and represent this man to the best of your goddamn abilities?’”
The bartender broke off her conversation to look in their direction. Tubby raised his fingers an inch off the scarred oak surface, so cool to the touch, and shook his head, no. The familiar pain of too much whiskey and too much sweet Coca-Cola had already spread over to the top of his skull.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him, ‘Yes, Your Honor. The man deserves his day in court.’ I should have told him, ‘Fuck no, Judge. I hate this guy. Take him away where I don’t have to look at him. Christ, sir, I’ll be embarrassed to admit to my godchildren that I was even in the same room with the guy.’ But I knew that was the wrong answer to the question.”
“You should have told him the truth,” Tubby said.
“Like what?”
“You should have said, ‘Heck no, Judge. But I’ll do a better job than anybody else you’re likely to get.”
Raisin shrugged and waved at the bartender. Tubby slid off his stool and grabbed the bar for support.
“I’m out of here,” he said.
Raisin looked concerned about being left alone.
“Let me buy you one more,” he said. “The night is still young.”
“No, I’m good. Tomorrow is a school day.”
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(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES CA )
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City of Beads: Tubby Dubonnet Series #2 (A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series)
Tony Dunbar
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The SECOND deliciously sneaky mystery in the Tubby Dubonnet series.
New Orleans lawyer Tubby Dubonnet is bored. He wants to bill enough hours to pay his alimony and keep his daughter in college, with enough left over for an occasional drink and a good meal, but he longs for something different and exciting.
Sure, researching licensing law for the new casino will keep trout meuniere on the table, but what could be more tedious? (Unless, of course, the client turns out to be connected.) Meanwhile, there’s the estate of an old friend who controls some dock leases on the wharf. And he agrees to help his daughter’s environmental group stop illegal dumping in the river.
Ho-hum, thinks our hero. But suddenly all three cases begin to converge in an entirely ominous way–the toxic dumping, the dock leases, and the too-good-to-be-true casino job. How is that possible? Could it be Tubby’s been set up as the fall guy in a Mob effort to expand its gambling empire?
Suddenly Tubby IS doing something different and exciting — he’s running for his life!
Excerpt:
Not far from Mike’s, on a little side street, the Thompsons were having a family barbecue. They had the TV on the front porch tuned in to the Saints game. The home team was playing arch rival Atlanta, which always got the fans keyed up to an emotional high. Thomas and Kip Thompson were outside watching the game and keeping a grill lit in the tiny front yard, which was separated from the sidewalk by a low iron picket fence. The day was special because they were celebrating Thomas’s recruitment to play baseball for the University of Southwestern Louisiana. The recruiter had promised he was going to be offered a scholarship.
They had smoked sausage and hamburgers fired up on the grill and an ice chest full of Old Milwaukee beer and Cokes. Their aunt was inside making her gumbo, soupy green and full of chicken, sausage, garlic, okra, and onions. It smelled so rich and fine that the old men in the neighborhood were starting to pass by to say hello. Their sister Tania, whose house this was, had a half-gallon bottle of Canadian Club and some ice in the living room for anybody who dropped in.
“Hurry up, Auntie,” Kip called. “We’re dying of hunger.”
“Don’t rush me,” came a deep voice from inside. “It takes a long time to make things just right.”
“You better get you one of these before they’re all gone.” Kip waved his beer can at his younger brother.
“Naw, you can do all the drinking for me,” Thomas said. He was in training and so high on the possibilities stretching out before him that Kip, his beer, and even Kip’s shiny Cadillac taxi parked by the curb held no temptations at all.
Kip drove a cab for a living. That was his story, and that’s what Thomas believed.
It was halftime. All the guests were inside sampling the gumbo and mixing drinks from the big bottle. Tania poured some potato chips into a plastic bowl to carry outside to her brothers.
A nothing-special sky-blue car, maybe an old Ford Galaxie, drove slowly past the house. Kip looked toward it, then jerked around to look at his brother.
“Thomas!” he yelled.
Anything else he planned to say got lost in the noise of an automatic pistol firing. Errant lead pellets broke the front windows of the house and sent the old men and women jumping for the floor, splashing gumbo and sweet cocktails over the walls and each other. But several found their target and perforated Kip’s chest and face, knocking him backward onto the porch and into his sister’s arms. She threw the potato chips into the front yard and fell on top of him. Thomas took a bullet in the knee.
The nothing-special car didn’t even speed up. It just made the corner and rolled on.
First there were the wails of the women, then the sirens came.
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(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES CA )
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Trick Question: A Hard-Boiled New Orleans Legal Thriller (Tubby Dubonnet #3) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series)
Tony Dunbar
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Trick Question is the THIRD mouth-watering mystery in the TUBBY DUBONNET series.
DUNBAR’S INVENTED A NEW GENRE: CALL IT CREOLE-FOODIE-NOIR.
For the discerning reader who enjoys a knowing chuckle, a sazerac, a bit of pompano en papillote, and a running travelogue of New Orleans along with his murders…
Medical lab janitor Cletus Busters is caught red-handed in a restricted area with the frozen head of Dr. Whitney Valentine, one of the lab’s most prestigious researchers. Busters won’t say much, except that he’s innocent. But given his conspicuous record and past as a voodoo guru, all signs point to life in prison.
Calling Tubby Dubonnet!
With the trial less than a week away, Busters’ lawyer has made exactly two motions – heading to the bar for several rounds of Wild Turkey and begging Tubby for help. Meanwhile, Tubby’s taken on a new client – a female boxer with an abusive boyfriend – and also has to referee the romantic entanglements of his ex-wife and three teenage daughters.
But as Buster’s trial proceeds, and the jury savors the startling evidence (alongside Dunbar’s succulent descriptions of Crescent City cuisine), the danger mounts. Revealing the murderer could prove to be Tubby’s biggest triumph – or his last case ever.
Warning: Do not attempt to read this book without a handy snack – preferably a Hubig’s pie or a pack of Zapp’s potato chips. Both would be better.
“Dunbar’s understated, syncopated delivery makes you wonder if there are enough honest men in New Orleans for a rubber of bridge” -Kirkus
“Dunbar weaves together the many strands of his highly entertaining tale with much skill and wit.” -Publisher’s Weekly
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(also available from Amazon. CO.UK DE FR IT ES CA )
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Shelter From The Storm: A Hard-Boiled New Orleans Legal Thriller (Tubby Dubonnet Mystery #4) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series)
Tony Dunbar
Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The FOURTH sly adventure in the Tubby Dubonnet Series, Tony Dunbar’s witty yet hard-boiled foodie-noir mysteries.
“Nothing… will have prepared you for Dunbar’s uniquely laid-back approach to natural disaster… Just enough nefarious plotting to punch up the drolly understated tableaux till you can’t help laughing, and just enough menace to make you feel you aren’t really missing anything by picking Tubby over the special-effects spectaculars at the local flick.” -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“By far the best of a very good collection.” -Book Page
“Slick prose, upbeat characters, and the particular wonders of the French Quarter will commend this to any Skip Langdon or David Robicheaux fan.”-Library Journal
THE SEAMIER SIDE OF THE CRESCENT CITY…
To out-of-town kingpin Willie LaRue, Mardi Gras seems the perfect time for a New Orleans heist – nobody, but nobody will be thinking about a single other thing. Parties, parades, chaos, alcohol – who could be concerned about a little thing like a bank job? Indeed, all might have gone well except for an out-of-season frog-flogger that threatens to flood the French Quarter – something even Hurricane Katrina couldn’t do.
Next thing you know the survivors – thieves and revelers alike – find themselves marooned together. As the LaRue gang plans its watery escape, raffish lawyer Tubby Dubonnet is obliged to take time out from his customary eating and loafing to thwart their murderous intentions. The body count rises as the tempest subsides, and Tubby finds himself fighting not only for his life, but (it seems to him) the very city itself.
A wry, compelling tale of The City That Care Forgot.
“By showing the damage that several days of hard rain could cause to the city’s fragile ecosystem, Dunbar makes the reader really care about its fate. He does the same for Tubby, a lazy, corner-cutting, slightly shabby, occasionally reckless but totally decent man.” -Chicago Tribune
Click here to get this book for $2.99
(also available from Amazon. CO.UK IT ES CA )
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