Book Talk: Spindler, ‘The Detective’s Daughter’

Set in New Orleans, Erica Spindler’s latest blockbuster mystery, “The Detective’s Daughter” (2022, 395 pages in paperback format), centers on a crime that is the obsession of two generations of NOPD detectives: Rourke Connors and his daughter Quinn. Quinn’s mother died early, and her father trained her to be a detective from the time she was a child. Rourke’s, as well as Quinn’s, partners — Mikey Bruzeau and “Dobby” Dobson, respectively — are drawn reluctantly into the drama.

The plot revolves around a murder-kidnapping event that involves the powerful Hudson family. Charles Hudson’s wife had been murdered, and his daughter Grace had been kidnapped. One night, five years ago, Rourke phoned Quinn to tell her that, finally, he had solved the case. He was drunk — not an unusual condition since his wife died — and Quinn told him to get sober and hung up on him. The next time she saw him, he was dead. Police called his demise a suicide. And Quinn tried to get on with her life, until….

Quinn is contacted by Eden Riley, a young woman from DeKalb, whose mother Angela recently died. Eden tells Quinn that she is writing a book about the Hudson case. She also relates an unlikely story which may have some vague connection to the Hudson murder-kidnapping. This intrigues Quinn because that unsolved case may have driven Rourke — the kind of police detective who stayed on every case until it was closed — to kill himself.