Bayou City Secrets by Deborah Powell

The cold winter of 1936 is about the get even colder for Hollis Carpenter. The tough, blunt-talking investigative reporter for the Houston Times has quit rather than accept a society-pages assignment.

Newspaper owner Andrew Delacroix personally intervenes to dissuade her, as does his heart-stoppingly beautiful wife, Lily Delacroix. Lily has never met anyone quite like aggressive, woman-loving Hollis ... Strange events beset Hollis. Her apartment is broken into. Tony Mahan, a cop friend, is murdered.

With the support of lesbian friends Gael and Katherine, Hollis takes charge. She seeks out a fearsome underworld figure and a whorehouse madam for information. She stalks the burglars of her apartment, and ferrets out Tonys special girlfriend, who calls herself Colette Chateau, the only two French words she knows.

Despite police sergeant Darryl Wade, who hates Hollis's lesbian guts, Hollis closes in on the source of the havoc swirling around her — and helps the entrancing Lily learn what has been missing in her life.

In Bayou City Secrets, Deborah Powell offers a comical, refreshing, thoroughly engaging throwback to the hardboiled mystery novels of yesteryear.