Andy Broussard & Kit Franklyn Books In Order

Publication Order of Andy Broussard & Kit Franklyn Books

The Andy Broussard & Kit Franklyn series is a series of highly popular forensic mystery novels written by one of the noteworthy authors from The United States named Don Donaldson. This series is comprised of a total of 7 books, which were released between the years 1988 and 2013. Author Donaldson has set each and every book of this series in New Orleans. The stories feature the chief protagonists in the form of Andy Broussard and Kit Franklyn. Author Donaldson has described Andy Broussard as a shrewd, obese chief medical officer, whereas Kit Franklyn is shown as a young psychologist. Donaldson started writing the series in the year 1988 and made its debut in the same year with the publication of the book titled Cajun Nights. After contributing with the first 6 books, the series underwent a 16 year hiatus. It was resurrected again in the year 2013 and the 7th book was written and published. As of today, author Donaldson is working on the development of a new plot in the mystery series, which makes it ongoing. During the publication of each of the mystery novels of this series, the critics labelled them as elegantly horrifying and clinically riveting. This helped the books to become even more successful all across the world. The series opens with the description of a series of murders and suicides. This causes the police department of New Orleans to assign the investigation of the death waves in the city to Kit Franklyn. She begins to focus on the mainly the suicide cases as she some common links to all of them. Franklyn finds that the victims had very much in common. The blood group of each of them was of type O and they drove the same vehicle. At the time of committing the deadly acts, they were humming the same nursery rhyme. Franklyn learns that her boss for this particular case is Andy Broussard. She finds him to be a jovial and an obese man. When Andy learns about the case, he too becomes extremely baffled. Together, the two try out all the scientific possibilities and when all their attempts to crack the case fails, they think of considering black magic as the cause of the deaths. The readers were intrigued till the climax of the series and found it to be an interesting read. This opening story sets the tone for the series, which helped it to become a successful mystery series overall.

One of the most popular books written in the Andy Broussard & Kit Franklyn series written by Don Donaldson is titled as ‘No Mardi Gras for the Dead’. The St Martin publication released it in 1992. Author Donaldson has described the main characters in this book as Kit Franklyn and her medical examiner boss named Andy Broussard. With the plot depicted in this novel, author Donaldson has once again returned to the irresistible New Orleans world. Once again, he has shown it as being filled with dark drama and having the ambience of rich desires. Just like his previous books, this book too describes the story related to murders and hidden secrets. The plot opens up by showing Dr. Kit Franklyn as a smart, sexy, and a hardworking and efficient criminal psychologist, as always. Along with her criminal psychology career, she decides to try her hand at horticulture and begins as an amateur horticulturist in her own garden. While doing the plantation of new rose trellis along with her pet dog named Lucky in the garden, she finds that Lucky has discovered a human jawbone. Immediately, Kit Franklyn calls her friend and boss Andy Broussard, who puts to use his expertise and forensic skills as a chief medical examiner.

With the help of his efficient team of examiners Andy exumes the 25 year old skeleton. Then, later studies on the skeleton show that it was of a young woman, who was murdered around 25 years ago, which was clearly evident. Both Andy and Kit begin to look for answers to the questions as to when was the woman exactly murdered and what was reason behind her murder. They also start looking for an unknown killer, but don’t seem to know where to look. However, they do not lose and continue to work on the case. The trail takes Kit and Andy back in time more than a couple of decades ago, where they learn about an incident on a mysterious evening involving some friends from a medical school. The incident also involved a ruthless killer, who was probably the killer of the woman. Kit and her boss become shocked when they learn about several recent killings in the same pattern as that of the old murder of the woman. This makes them suspect that the ruthless killer is still out there in the open and targeting innocent young women. And after a long chase, they finally end up catching the deadly killer and put an end to his brutal ways of killing.

Another well known book released in the series is entitled ‘Louisiana Fever’. It was published in 1996 by the publishers at St Martin’s Press. At the beginning of this story, author Donaldson has mentioned the outbreak of a virus in New Orleans, which seems to be similar to Ebola. Due to this, the city gets stricken with panic. Andy Broussard and his colleague Kit Franklyn discover that the deadly epidemic is the only thing taking lives in and around New Orleans. When Franklyn receives an invitation to the famous Cajun restaurant of Grandma O in a mysterious manner, she smells something is not right. The invitation had come with a yellow rose having a long stem. To find out what it really meant, Franklyn decides to visit the restaurant. At one of the tables, Franklyn comes across an old man who seems to be waiting for her with a similar rose in his hand. He stands up, welcomes her by taking her name and then falls down to death. Franklyn becomes shocked at the turn of events and keeps wondering who the old man was and why did he take her name before dying. She also finds it surprising to see that her parents are holding back something after knowing about this incident. Following the autopsy of the old man, Andy finds out that he was injected with a deadly virus, which was known to cause the victims to die within a few days.

To add to the complexity of the case, Andy learns that the virus does not have any cure. While trying to establish the identity of the dead man, Franklyn disappears along with Teddy LaBiche, her boyfriend. Later, another corpse is found, killed in the same way as their first one. But this time, the dead body had some ligature signs around the neck, which provided an important clue to Andy about the whereabouts of Franklyn and Teddy. In his attempt to save his colleague and her lover as well prevent the spreading of the lethal virus, Andy Broussard goes on to confront an extremely violent and brilliant psychopath hiding deep in the bayou of Louisiana. Andy also finds that the killer’s family was hiding the dark secrets about him for many years and had gone to extreme lengths in doing so. In the end, Andy becomes successful in saving Teddy and Franklyn, reveals the identity of the killer, and stops the deadly epidemic.