Robin Desman Spindt, who pens under the name Robin DS, is set to release her debut novel We’re Screwed on September 22, 2026. Miss Spindt is a former alum of Tulane University (MBA Class of ’97), and went on to be a professor at Tulane for sixteen years. In 2007 she began her novel when PTSD and storm damage were so pervasive throughout her home of New Orleans. Several business opportunities put the book on the back burner, but she has coupled with the right editor to set her debut novel out into the world.

Set in the anxious aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, We’re Screwed by Robin DS is a character-driven mystery combining crime, dark humor, friendship, and trauma. With New Orleans still wounded, the novel begins with a compelling question: How did a dead college student end up inside a crate in Roni Hirsch’s storage unit?

Roni is overwhelmed by a city struggling to recover when she learns that Ben Passarella, a student she barely knew, has been found dead in her warehouse. Although she was away from New Orleans when Katrina struck, the location of the body places her under suspicion. Fear leads her to hide, and what she intends as self-protection deepens suspicion.

From there, We’re Screwed develops into a layered New Orleans mystery in which almost every answer produces another question.

One of the novel’s strongest elements is its post-Katrina setting. The hurricane is not simply historical scenery behind the crime. Its destruction affects the investigation itself. Police departments are overwhelmed, residents are displaced, evidence handling is imperfect, records are missing, and normal systems have been damaged.

That atmosphere gives the mystery tension. Ben’s death cannot be investigated inside a clean, orderly system. The city is operating through exhaustion, grief, curfews, damaged infrastructure, and uncertainty. As Detective Fritz works through the evidence, the chaos surrounding the case becomes part of the legal action.

For readers interested in  disaster fiction, New Orleans crime novels, or mysteries rooted in Southern ambiance this setting gives We’re Screwed character distinct from a standard whodunit.

Roni is not written as an invulnerable amateur detective who always knows what to do. She panics, makes mistakes, worries about how others see her, and uses humor when fear becomes unbearable. She also lives with Tourette’s syndrome and anxiety, which can intensify under stress. Rather than turning those qualities into a gimmick, the story integrates them into the pressure she experiences while being questioned, investigated, and judged.

Her wit is important to the novel’s tone. Even when circumstances become frightening, Roni’s observations and exchanges with others keep the story from becoming relentlessly bleak.

Her closest ally is Elizabeth Hebert, a lawyer and longtime friend whose loyalty anchors the story. Their relationship brings warmth, conflict, humor, and determination. They do not simply wait for the truth to arrive. They organize information, follow connections, question assumptions, and try to understand how Ben moved from the French Quarter to the place where his body was discovered.

As the story expands, the mystery reaches into university life, PIKE fraternity culture, powerful local connections, and people with reasons to protect themselves. Ben’s history within the fraternity, the behavior of students around him, and the influence of figures such as Jeb Barker complicate any simple explanation of what happened.

The novel becomes interested in silence: why people remain quiet, whom that silence protects, and what happens when fear, loyalty, reputation, guilt, and power overlap. Characters may share a secret without sharing the same motive. Some are frightened. Some want to protect careers or institutions. Others want control.

This makes We’re Screwed more than a story about identifying a killer. It is also about responsibility. The book asks what people owe the truth when telling it may destroy relationships, expose institutions, or implicate themselves.

Despite the seriousness of its central mystery, Robin DS gives the story a lively social world. Friends, lawyers, police officers, students, business owners, and New Orleans personalities move through a city trying to rediscover normal life. Humor appears beside grief rather than replacing it, creating a human tone.

The novel also resists the idea that justice is simple. Ben can be both a victim whose death deserves the truth and a troubling person whose behavior harmed others. The story makes room for both realities, and that moral complexity becomes important as hidden events come into focus.

We’re Screwed should appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven crime fiction, New Orleans mysteries, post-disaster novels, investigative suspense, and stories about secrets buried inside powerful social networks. Its hook is immediate, but its larger appeal comes from the people caught around the mystery and the damaged city in which they must confront it.

At its heart, We’re Screwed is about more than a body in a crate. It is about what happens after a catastrophe, when institutions are weakened, reputations are fragile, friendships are tested, and the truth has been hidden by people with something to lose. Robin DS aka Robin Desman Spindt turns that premise into a mystery about survival, accountability, and the difficult difference between escaping blame and facing what really happened.

Coming September 22, 2026.