Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Bait is the Kenneth Abel standalone that runs alongside the Danny Chaisson series and shows that his voice carries even when his usual protagonist is not on the page. The plot follows an undercover state investigator working a corruption case in a small Louisiana parish where the local power structure has been operating without significant interference for decades.
Abel's great gift is the Louisiana texture, and Bait is steeped in it. The parish geography, the family lineages that overlap with the political structure, the small bayou towns where everyone knows who got which kickback when, all carry weight. The undercover protagonist is given enough interior life that you understand why his marriage has been failing.
Four stars. Another underread Kenneth Abel novel. Recommended to fans of the Chaisson series.
Related reads
If you liked Bait
Cold Steel Rain
by Kenneth Abel
The first Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing New Orleans politics and corruption with a New Orleans-specific moral exhaustion you cannot fake.
Down in the Flood
by Kenneth Abel
The third Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing Hurricane Katrina before Katrina happened.
The Burying Field
by Kenneth Abel
The second Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel deepening the Louisiana political world with a parish-corruption investigation that earns its weight.
The Blue Wall
by Kenneth Abel
Another Kenneth Abel standalone. NYPD-adjacent crime fiction with the corruption layer treated as a moral problem rather than a thriller device.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
More by this author