Floating Souls | The Canal Murders

Floating Souls: The Canal Murders

When bodies of young women are found floating in New Orleans drainage canals, Maggie Andreponte, local forensic anthropologist, is called in to help find a pattern to the homicides and to profile a perpetrator.

Complicating matters, an old flame from graduate school, now Minister of Antiquities in Rome, asks for her immediate assistance to sort out the mystery of ancient bodies found in a famous campanile in Venice, Italy.

Juggling work on corpses on two continents challenges Maggie in ways no one could have predicted. Though confident in her professional expertise, Maggie is not as secure in her personal life. A secret history with the parish coroner, an over-eager amateur archeologist, and intrusions by a documentary producer are distracting her from her mission. When it turns out that someone is stalking Maggie, the tension ratchets up, leading to a startling conclusion to this taut and fascinating sleuthing experience.

“Elegant, informative and masterfully crafted, this story announces an exciting new talent in the world of mystery fiction. Manhein brings to Floating Souls all the knowledge of her many years as a successful forensic anthropologist and all her considerable understanding of human nature. She has the rare ability to construct a setting that grabs the reader and holds fast. We hope to see more of her.”
— Malcolm Shuman, author of The Levee

“Manhein takes the reader by both hands and thrusts them into the canals of New Orleans and Venice. They come out dripping with a stark knowledge of one murder after another. Forensic anthropologist Maggie Andreponte thrusts her hands into the corpses themselves to resurrect the details of their lives and deaths. Scientist and literary artist Manhein knows how to activate the reader’s emotions, imagination, and intellect to make her fiction as real as the reader can endure, right on through the shocking revelations at the end.”
— David Madden, author of Abducted by Circumstance