Stop Nine

About this book

Delphine Marchand runs the most popular murder walk in New Orleans: nine stops, ending on the levee with the story of a nameless girl who went into the river. Then the bodies start, one per stop, in order, each posed like a tale she tells for tips. A literary thriller.

Twenty years ago, a girl walked into the Mississippi and never came out — or so Delphine Marchand has told ten thousand strangers, nine dollars a head, every night of her career. Del runs the most popular murder-walk in New Orleans, nine stops through the French Quarter’s darkest history, and she closes every show on the levee with the saddest story she owns: the nameless girl who went into the river.

Then the bodies start.

One per stop. In order. A poisoner at the absinthe room. A throat cut beneath the carriage lamp. Each victim posed to match a tale Del tells for tips — and each one a person from the single worst summer of her life. The city decides the famous tour guide has graduated to making her own attractions. The detective who never closed her sister’s file thinks otherwise. And the killer, patient and precise, is working straight down Del’s route toward the ninth stop, toward the river, toward the one truth she has spent two decades refusing to say out loud.

Because Stop Nine was never a stranger. And the person recreating Del’s tour knows exactly whose name belongs in the silence at the end of the walk.

A propulsive, devastating literary thriller about grief turned into product, the lies a city agrees to believe, and the price of a name kept buried too long. For readers of Gillian Flynn, Megan Abbott, and Attica Locke.