I

INTRODUCTION

She's back! After a stint in Lake Charles chasing down insane Texas Cheerleader Mothers, Cayenne McKenzie Del Roi is back in New Orleans ready for a whole new season of Mardi Gras mayhem and madness. Unfortunately, for this detective, the madness of the Carnival season usually means a dead body shows up somewhere in her path. No exception this year.

New Orleans, despite hurricanes and floods and poverty and diaspora and crime, is a city passionately in love with food. It seems all Louisianans I've met know how to cook, and cook well. Every one of them thinks their gumbo is the best and they have strong opinions about shrimp, roux, crawfish, and the proportion of spice that is needed in each dish. Cayenne, herself named by her New Orleans born father for a spice, finds herself in the midst of this obsession in the newest of the Mardi Gras mysteries. Black Roux digs heartily into the culture of food in New Orleans and invites you to serve yourself up a savory plateful and come along.

As always, Chapter One begins on Epiphany, January 6 and will post a new chapter every Tuesday until the tale concludes on Mardi Gras proper, this year on February 24. May it feed your hunger for entertainment, intrigue, and the bizarre, and help you survive the deep freeze of 2009!

                                                              --Author Aileen McInnis January 6, 2009.


To Chapter One: Cheese On The Rocks



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

In thankful and grateful acknowledgement, in this novel, you'll find snippets of writing from other authors. I enjoyed the Killer Rubboard magazine format of 2007 so much that I invited some folks to contribute to this year's invention. Special thanks goes out to writers Joe Karson, Collette Costa, Jennifer King, Dee Dee Keyser, Christy Williams and Steve Montooth for the inspiration of the Krewe of Reviews, and the contribution of the character of Flamenco by Bob Bell and Deborah Page. A tip of the glass goes to Ray Garrity for his recipes made with beer inspiration and endless planning of how we are someday "going to write a cookbook."

And finally, for just pure fun, thanks to Maridon Boario for once saying in passing at the Alaskan in Juneau, "I think Cayenne should have her own MySpace page."