Pete Brady Mysteries

Deer Slayer (St. Martins, 1991)
ISBN: 0312063369

Newspaperman Pete Brady is on a hunting trip with the sheriff Troy, Louisiana, and his son, when the boy fires a shot. Expecting to find a deer, the men discover a man's body; it seems the boy has made a tragic mistake.

Matt Garrity won't accept that his son made such a grave error in judgment, after how thoroughly Scotty had been trained. But he can't investigate on the boy's behalf, so he asks Pete to find out what really happened in the woods that morning. When Brady digs around, he finds that nobody much cares for Dwayne Elkins, the dead man. The whole town knows about his drinking and philandering, and his family resents the way Elkins had been running their business into the ground. Elkins had also crossed swords with a local environmental activist, Troy's oddball.

During the course of his investigation Brady uncovers more shady business beneath the facade of the small, sleepy, southern town. As he digs deeper, his journalist's instincts lead him to the truth.

"Karl...does more than immerse his characters in a baffling suspense yarn; he also draws some sharply defined contrasts between urband New Orleans life-styles and the more serene character of rural north Louisiana." —New Orleans Times-Picayune

Death Notice (St. Martins, 1990)
ISBN: 0312038119

As editor of the parish weekly, Brady is in trouble again when he runs an ad for Cory Wilde, announcing his homecoming after serving 29 years for the rape-killing of a teenaged girl. In the uproar against Wilde's return Brady senses fear as well as anger. Obeying his instincts, he asks questions: Why did the jury spare the convict from execution, given the unassailable evidence against him? Who engineered a parole for such an unspeakable criminal? After murders, arson and a presumed suicide, Brady steps up his investigation, inciting violence from a mob out to lynch him and Wilde. Numerous realistic characters, good and evil, absorb the reader in the tragic mystery, right up to its unpredicted resolution.

"[A] complex, gripping novel...Numerous realistic characters, good and evil, absorb the reader in the tragic mystery, right up to its unpredictable resolution." —Publishers Weekly

"Like James Crumley, Bill Crider and James Lee Burke, [Shuman] has a good feel for the rhythm of rural life and its peculiar brand of crime. His evocation of the inhabitants and environs of Troy is subtle but effective, with a real ring of truth." —New Orleans Times-Picayune

Killer's Ink (Dodd, Mead, 1988)
ISBN: 0396092799

When his source for a crime expose is murdered, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Pete Brady resigns from the New Orleans Times-Picayune and buys a small weekly newspaper in northern Louisiana. He hopes that rural Troy Parish will provide the peace he needs to build a new life and to come to terms with his feelings of guilt. He has only been there a week, however, when Frieda MacBride, waspish writer of the social column, is murdered in the local churchyard during a "cemetery working"--the traditional gathering of families to clean and maintain the graves. Curiously, her body is found near the burial place of an unknown drifter, murdered at some undetermined previous time, his skeleton uncovered in a levee in 1954.

Kelly, the daughter of the paper's previous owner, helps Pete to grapple with the mystery of the unknown drifter as well as that of universally hated Frieda. And under the seemingly placid surface of the small southern town, there is a hidden threat from someone who will kill to stop a search for the truth.

"Mark this down as a Find of the Month. It's a wonderful classical mystery set in Louisiana...Killer's Ink is a flavorful book you don't want to pick up when there's work to be done." —Syracuse Post-Standard

"Big-city reporter buys small-town Louisiana newspaper, stumbles onto chain of violence and betrayal going back many, many years...M.S. Karl has fun blowing the dust off the ancient and not-so-ancient deceits." —New York Daily News

"...fast-paced and interesting...a wonderful who-dunit." —Baton Rouge Sun Magazine