About the Author

Jason Berry is renowned for his pioneering investigative reporting on sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood. Lead Us Not Into Temptation (1992) was the first major book on the church's crisis and is still used in many newsrooms. He has worked as a consultant for ABC News and is routinely interviewed in the national media about Catholic church issues and his native city, New Orleans.

Vows of Silence (2004) prompted a Vatican investigation and demotion of one of the most powerful priests in Rome. The author is putting the finishing touches on a film documentary based on that book this summer. Mr. Berry is also a cultural chronicler of New Orleans in such books as Up From the Cradle of Jazz, a grand history of popular music. His play, Earl Long in Purgatory, won a 2002 Big Easy Award for best original work of theater.

About the Book

Last of the Red Hot Poppas is part ribald whodunit, part social satire and part "spiritual comedy," as Berry calls it. It's a chaotic romp through the many levels of "Looziana," but above all, it is a novel about the struggle to maintain one's integrity in a mad world of politics and power.