An off-beat love story; a baffling maze of

intrigue and crime; the most complex hero-

ine in recent fiction; a vibrant portrait of

New Orleans, loveliest and most tawdry of

American cities--these are some of the ele-

ments that give The Snare its extraordinary

appeal. Julia Garrett was young and strik-

ing; privilcgcd upbringing in the Garden

District had been hers; she was well-edu-

cated, well-connected, poised and coolly

self-assured. And Julia Garrett fell in love

with a handsome drifter from Ohio who

wanted to be a jazz musician-and who

presently was arrested on a charge of mur-

der. From then on, the snare was all about

her, a fantastic web woven of the whole

sinister fabric of the New Orleans under-

world: second-rate jazz bands, insinuating

dope pushers, police spies in improbable

p/aces, the half-crazed preacher of a pri-

vate religion, the eerie possibility of black

magic and the urgent reality of passion and

murder. And Julia was caught in it be-

cause, in the end, she wanted to be, be-

cause she understood this world and took

life from it; and the root of her understand-

ing, she knew, lay in a dark place in her

sheltered childhood

Elizabeth Speneer s beautifully crafted

stories and novels, among them The Ligh

in the Piazza, The Voice at the Back Door,

and No Place for an Angel, have estab-

lished her beyond challenge in the first