No Mardi Gras for the Dead - D.J. Donaldson (Spotlight)

No Mardi Gras for the Dead - D.J. Donaldson

Fiction / Mystery/Police Procedural

PUB DATE:               October, 2014

Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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A Blurb About the Book

Kit Franklyn, lately drowning in personal doubts about her life and career, thinks that investigating the corpse she found in the garden of her new home will be the perfect distraction. Together with her boss, the loveable and unconventional chief medical examiner Andy Broussard, she sets out to solve this case that’s growing colder by the minute. Though they identify the body as a missing hooker, now dead for twenty-seven years, all hope of conviction seems lost—until the unorthodox duo link the body and two recent murders to a group of local, wealthy physicians.

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EXCERPT:

The night air was warm and humid, but her skin was pebbly with gooseflesh. Usually talkative and outgoing, tonight she lay quietly, almost pensively, her back to the stars, her face turned to the side. A fly hummed out of the darkness and landed. It briefly explored the surface of her cloudy cornea, then began to tuck its eggs into the corner of her eye. 

Her respiration had ceased many hours earlier, but enzymes were still functioning, acting now without direction, turning on the organs they once served. One life had ended, but millions reaped the benefits, finding passage into previously forbidden chambers where in mindless celebration they multiplied.

She was lifted from the grass and dropped into a hole in the earth, her rigidity requiring the same fit she once demanded of her clothing. Then the dirt… filling… covering… hiding…

With the sun, life spilled into the streets and the ground warmed. Though it was cool below, her red cells eventually gave up their hemoglobin, which seeped from her vessels, staining her once-blemish-free skin with reddish brown trails. A shower brought smiles to the lips of the living, but also summoned forth delicate mycelial threads from germinating mold spores that began digesting her clothing.

Days passed into weeks and the gases came, lifting the dirt, creating pressures that rearranged… pushed… expelled. In life, she had been desired by many. In death, she was sought by more and they came to her, embraced her and became one with her. Then as the weeks blended into months, their ardor waned and one by one they left her, until she was very much alone.

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About the Author

Don Donaldson, who also writes as D. J. Donaldson, holds a Ph.D. in human anatomy. In his professional career, he has taught microscopic anatomy to over 5,000 medical and dental students and published dozens of research papers on wound healing. He is also the author of seven published forensic mysteries and five medical thrillers. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his two West Highland terriers.