Customer Reviews

New Orleans Confidential

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An interesting and outstanding short story collection, NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL is a mix of noir mysteries and heart-wrenching tales with two common threads: First, the stories are set in the late 1940s New Orleans (with realistic descriptions of that exotic city long before the levees broke); Second is the leading character, Private Eye-Lucien Caye, a tough guy with a heart.

Caye, a WWII vet and former NOPD cop, is now a PI, living and working in the shabby lower French Quarter after the war. He is different from the your typical PI. He doesn't smoke, drinks only on occasion, rarely wears a hat because it messes up his hair and will bend (and sometimes break) the law to mete out his own form of justice.

The cases come to him in classic PI fashion - pretty damsels in distress, jealous spouses, dangerous femme fatales with murder and lust in their hearts, sexy women with an eye for good looking men (like Caye) and precarious situations. The cases come with heartfelt appeal - a little girl looking for her lost cat, a boy looking for his runaway father, a letter from a child asking Santa to take him to the angels because his parents haven't enough food and daddy won't eat, giving his food to the boy and his mommie. Lucien Caye attacks these cases with determination. There's even a ghostly trek into the swamps and a love sorceress. He won't give up and you won't put this book down.

While some of the stories are G-rated enough to have been published in airline magazines, some are violent, profane and extremely erotic.

O'Neil De Noux's talent goes beyond the penning of the stories. This reviewer has learned the photo which adorns the cover of the book was taken by De Noux. It is the photo of the building on Barracks Street in New Orleans where Lucien Caye's office and apartment are located, a building thankfully spared by Hurricane Katrina. It's a the corner of Barracks and Dauphine Streets.

Don't miss this exceptional collection.

I have to thank a Louisiana State Trooper for alerting me to this book, which has just about everything that'll please a woman reader like me.

If you're in a maternal mood, then private detective Lucien Caye is very good with kids, working cases for them pro-bono. If you're in a frisky mood, then this is definitely your kind of man. Lucien is a turn-on as he helps women with their problems in more ways than one. If you're in the mood for a good detective story, check out "Hard Rain," a genuine murder mystery. If you're in the mood for a little romance, there's "Expect Consequences."

I'm sure men will see Lucien Caye as a man's man, but I really think he's a woman's man. These stories seem to have everything: mystery, intrigue, sex, violence, love, even swamp monsters.

It is a great book about New Orleans.