Maureen Coughlin

An audacious thriller from a major new talent Life isn't panning out for Maureen Coughlin. At twenty-nine, the tough-skinned Staten Island native's only excitement comes from-well, not much. A fresh pack of American Spirits, maybe, or a discreet dash of coke before work. If something doesn't change soon, she'll end up a "lifer" at the Narrows, the faux-swank bar where she works one long night after another. But just like the island, the Narrows has its seamy side. After work one night, Maureen walks in on a tryst between her co-worker Dennis and Frank Sebastian, a silver-haired politico. When Sebastian demands her silence, Maureen is more than happy to forget what she's seen-until Dennis turns up dead on the train tracks the next morning. The murder sends Maureen careening out of her stultifying routine and into fast-deepening trouble. Soon she's on the run through the seedy underbelly of the borough, desperate to stop Sebastian before Dennis' fate becomes her own. With The Devil She Knows, Bill Loehfelm has written a pitch-black thriller in a fresh, compulsively readable voice, with pages that turn themselves. This is the real deal: a breakout novel by a writer whom Publishers Weekly has praised for his "superb prose and psychological insights."

When Maureen Coughlin first appeared in The Devil She Knows, the New Orleans Times-Picayune called her "unforgettable" and "the character of the year." Booklist named The Devil She Knows one of 2011's ten best thrillers and declared Maureen "as compelling a character as this reviewer expects to see this year." Now she's back in Bill Loehfelm's new thriller, The Devil in Her Way, and her life has changed in more ways than one: she's starting over in New Orleans as a newly minted member of the police force. Kicking off her final week of field training, Maureen takes a punch from a panicked suspect bursting out of an apartment. Her training officer laughs it off, and the incident even yields a small victory: the cops recover a stash of pot and guns. But out on the street, on the fringes of the action, Maureen sees something sinister transpire between two neighborhood boys that leaves her shaken, and she knows there's more to the story than she's seen. As we follow Maureen's dangerous hunt for answers, Loehfelm leads us around New Orleans' most hidden corners and into its darkest outposts. Bill Loehfelm is the real deal-a lauded thriller writer in the modern tradition of Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, and Michael Connelly. He knows the voices of his city. Like Lehane's Boston, Price's New York City, or Connelly's Los Angeles, Loehfelm's New Orleans leaps off the page, as vibrant, flawed, and unruly as his reborn, fire-hearted protagonist. In The Devil in Her Way, Loehfelm's talents flourish, and the result is a ruthless and propulsive thriller.

It's been a brutal year for the rookie New Orleans cop Maureen Coughlin. Her first arrests, her first black eye, and, after a stinging brush with the corrupt heart of her adopted city, her first suspension. As she waits out the suspension, hoping to save her badge, Maureen finds increasingly dark and dangerous ways to pass the time. Justice, she tells herself, is being served. No need for the NOPD to know what she's doing. Maureen believes getting back to the job she loves is worth any sacrifice, any risk, that it's the only thing she really wants. But wearing the badge again means stepping back into the crosshairs of ruthless people who want her out of the way and don't care who else gets caught in the crossfire.

New Orleans's toughest female cop tackles her very first Mardi Gras Now that she's back on the force and her work with the FBI is over, Maureen Coughlin should have a quieter life. Until Mardi Gras rolls around, that is. New Orleans's biggest and most infamous party, Mardi Gras may be fun for the revelers but it's hell for the NOPD, who try to keep the peace on streets jam-packed with drunken parade-goers and the thousands of tourists pouring into the city to join the action. With all that chaos, the city becomes a breeding ground for crimes of all shapes and sizes. Maureen's Mardi Gras night starts with a bang when a man in pink zebra-print tights-and nothing else-runs past and throws himself onto the hood of a moving car. It only gets worse when she hears gunshots over the noise of the crowd. In the midst of the revelry, Maureen and her fellow cops must stabilize the shooting victims and hunt down the shooter, all while grappling with massive crowds, a camera crew intent on capturing the investigation for their YouTube channel, an incompetent on-duty detective, and race relations in a city more likely to mistrust cops than ever. It's going to be one very long night for Maureen