In 1958, gambler Deke Watley decides to leave the comfort and golden dust of Texas for the toxic chiaroscuro of Mardi Gras New Orleans: he smells the chance of a lifetime. It gets even better when this opportunity to win big collides with Hannah, a woman from his past—a woman he wronged—a wrong he’s regretted ever since. Playing him in more ways than one is Alex Moreau, the half-black son of a notorious white racketeer. It’s Alex’s game, and he weaves the worst of his troubled past to create an orgy of vengeance, only to find that the other players have scores to settle, too. Amid the noise and the frenzy of the drunken crowds, streamers flying like electric currents, bejeweled costumes glittering, Deke stumbles through this foreign, lurid town, seeking a return to the innocence he turned his back on long ago. However, time is running out and old debts must be paid before Deke—or any other hustler—leaves Bourbon Street alive. This debut novel from Leonce Gaiter combines Walter Mosley’s dark brushstrokes of postwar America with the best of the grifters and petty hustlers that populate Chester Himes, bringing a fresh voice to the African-American crime novel.
I like to write about the extraordinary. I have little interest in domestic drama, in small tales of internal struggle. I want to read and write characters who are extraordinary--larger than life. I certainly don't want to read or write about people who are "just like me." I want to read and write about those infinitely grander than I will ever be, willing to risk more, grasp more, love more, hate more, whose time and place demands more than you or I can probably imagine having to give... I guess it's my Southern gothic roots.
Official bio blurb below:
Leonce Gaiter is the author of the noir thriller Bourbon Street. His nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, LA Weekly, NY Newsday, The Washington Post, Salon, and in national syndication.
His short fiction has appeared in the literary magazine Archipelago. His thriller Bourbon Street was published by Carroll & Graf in 2005. His historical novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang" is from Legba Books, September 2011. He currently lives in Northern California
Raised in New Orleans, Washington D.C., Germany, Missouri, Maryland and elsewhere, Leonce Gaiter is the quintessential army brat--rootless, restive, and disagreeable. He began writing in grade school and continued the habit through his graduation from Harvard. He moved to Los Angeles and put his disagreeability to work in the creative and business ends of the film and music industries.
