as a journalist, Julienne Drew Smith (1944– ) turned to fiction writing. Having graduated from the University of Mississippi, she took a job as a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, followed by stints at the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Barbara News-Press. Other jobs included writing catalog copy for Banana Republic, serving as press officer for the San Francisco district attorney, and, with fellow mystery writer Marcia Muller and others, forming Invisible Ink, a consulting company that provided editing and writing services.
Death Turns a Trick (1982), Smith’s first mystery, introduced Rebecca Schwartz, a San Francisco attorney who, against her father’s wishes, followed in his career footsteps. She is smart, ambitious, independent, Jewish, and a feminist—as she is quick to tell anyone who will listen. She appeared in five novels before Smith began to focus on Skip Langdon, who made her debut in New Orleans Mourning (1990), which won the Edgar for best novel of the year. Langdon has been the protagonist in eight additional novels.
Langdon, a former debutante and Carnival queen, works as a policewoman in New Orleans—an unlikely choice for a woman who had been a petty thief and a drug user and had flunked out of Tulane. She may be the most recognizable cop in the NOPD being six feet tall, big-boned, with lots of long curly hair and bright green eyes.
“Blood Types” was originally published in Sisters in Crime, edited by Marilyn Wallace (New York, Berkley, 1989).