Carmela and her gal pal, Ava, are dressed to kill for Jekyl Hardy's Mardi Gras party at his to-die-for apartment in the French Quarter. Jekyl is a float designer.  Ava and Carmela are good friends, but so different in tastes. Ava runs a Goth shop, dresses slightly trampy, prefers style magazines to books and loves to party. Carmela can be pretty vampy—only if necessary—and enjoys going out, but her scrapbooking store, Memory Mine, is at the forefront of her mind. In the midst of the chatting, music and drink, Carmela's timing tomorrow's opening. Selling green and purple ribbons and paper will put gold in her pocket. Carmela and Ava are of the same mind when it comes to amateur sleuthing. They work together and confide in each other.

During the party Carmela and Ave meet Archie, Jekyl's neighbor and possible lover.  Unfortunately the two run into Archie again after he's been garroted with a barbed wire. Carmela isn't impressed with the lousy police work in securing the scene or how the case is handled later. She is impressed with the detective who ends up with the case — detective Edgar Babcock. Problem is every time things get personal, her soon-to-be ex, Shamus, pops up.

Needless to say the girls live the highlife attending party after party. Ava socializes while Carmela hunts down suspects and clues. It's a deadly party between the pages as these two take on the New Orleans police dept, a Russian mobster, a rare coin dealer and a drug dealer, all the while searching for buried treasure alone in dangerous places.

Laura Childs' scrapbooking characters are different from those in her Tea Shop series. The scrapbooking duo dwells on clothes, appearances and guys — a very, very tame Sex and the City.  With her unique characters and twists and turns, Childs knows how to put a mystery together. Always entertaining...

Childs fans can expect an even different trio of sleuths in her upcoming Cackleberry Club mystery series due out December 2008.