Publisher's Synopsis
In The Parlor of Spiders Mary Cuffe Fitzmorris, a clerk at the United States Supreme Court, is given the Cold Case files of her great grandfather Michael Cuffe, who was Chief of Police in New Orleans during the desegregation era and during the bitterly contentious Presidential election of 1960. She and her grandfather Mickey Cuffe, his wife the Countess von Markenstein, his law partner and cousin Dan McDevitt and his wife Meg and Dan's brother Jesuit Father Jim McDevitt meet to read the cold case file that describes the murder of Marsha Jean Thibodeaux, a millionairess and benefactor of numerous charities include her favorite the Catholic Church and the trial of her alleged murderer busboy Josiah Johnson. As the Krewe as they call themselves read the file they found themselves drawn inexorably into the political intrigue of New Orleans politicians, oil tycoons, restauranteur, artists and theatre people discovering that things were not as they seemed. Set against the background of rising racial tensions and the tumult of a political structure that is changing and not for the better, the Krewe must content with the ghosts of the past along with the evils and sins of he present. The Parlor of Spiders is a parable of about the ironies and the contradictions that beset America's Race relations, the legal and political systems
