Julie Smith's New Orleans Mourning won the 1991 Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel, making Smith the first American woman to win the award in that category since 1956. Detective Skip Langdon returned in The Axeman's Jazz, Jazz Funeral, New Orleans Beat, The Kindness of Strangers, Crescent City Kill and 82 Desire.

A former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle, Julie Smith is also the creator of San Francisco sleuth/lawyer Rebecca Schwartz, who appears in Death Turns a Trick, The Sourdough Wars, Tourist Trap, Dead in the Water, and Other People's Skeletons.