Lafitte Lives

Old New Orleans Bookshop Mystery, #1

by

Christi Keating Sumich

A mysterious journal brings a grieving father back to the land of the living.

Lafitte Lives is the first book in author Christi Keating Sumich’s new historical cozy series, the Old New Orleans Bookshop Mysteries, and it sets a marvelously suspenseful tone for its intriguing tale. With its vivid characters, well-known events, and familiar landmarks, the story brings the local legends of Jean Lafitte to vibrant life. 

Tobias Whitney is a man half-alive, working as the sexton at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, the job he landed after the loss of his family’s bookshop in the aftermath of the yellow fever outbreak three years earlier. But the unexpected discovery of a handwritten journal at the tomb of Dominique You, the purported half-brother of the famed pirate Jean Lafitte, changes everything for him. The mysteries it poses by its claims that Jean Lafitte faked his death captures Tobias’s imagination, and his inability to decipher the French text forces him to reconnect with his feisty, hardworking wife, Mary Catherine, who, though grieving like her husband, has had to remain present and move on for the sake of their two sons, Shane and Connor. 

The story within a story reveals Lafitte’s life as an exciting tale of pirates, privateers, love, betrayal, and loyalty to the new nation of the United States. While the journal claims to want to set the record straight on Lafitte’s life, it’s written by a pirate, and it repeatedly warns not to believe anything a pirate says. As Tobias starts his journey back into life, there is the lure of pirates’ gold in the journal’s pages, but the real treasure is Tobias’s rescue and return to his family. 

I recommend LAFITTE LIVES to readers of historical fiction and cozy mysteries. 

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advance Review Copy from the author through Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours.