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The next heart-pounding chapter in Fulmer’s Storyville series featuring New Orleans detective Valentin St. Cyr Autumn 1913. Valentin St. Cyr has been absent from his Storyville stomping grounds for some months, trying to make it in the straight detective world and make a go of it with his longtime love, Justine. But then a man is found dead in a Storyville brothel.The madam immediately turns to the creole detective for help.He resists, but when several more bodies turn up in Storyville, Valentin can’t help but come to the aid of the place—and the people—he tried to leave behind.Just when he has the case wrapped around his finger, it turns out Valentin has been played.The police captain thinks he’s meddling and may be guilty of murder.He’s on the run, and Justine has turned her back on him, retaliating with a handsome young fellow in a very sporty car. But is she being lured into a trap too?
As the third Storyville mystery begins, Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr has just returned to New Orleans. Having only recently solved the case of the jass murders, he is drawn reluctantly into the investigation of a new murder- that of a well-to-do gentleman on seedy Rampart Street. Then another wealthy society man turns up dead, and the detective learns that the two victims were acquainted years ago. In a spider's web of coincidence, the second murder has been witnessed-or has it?-by the man who's now keeping Justine, Valentin's old girlfriend, as his paramour. Valentin probes deeper even as the city's most powerful leaders pressure him to drop the investigation. What could he be getting close to, and what nerves might he unwittingly strike?
In the rowdy red-light district of Storyville, four players of the new music they call "jass" have turned up dead. When Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr begins to investigate, he discovers that every one of the victims once played in the same band, and the only one left alive has gone into hiding.As he digs deeper, Valentin becomes convinced that a shadowy woman is the key to the mystery. His efforts to find her touch nerves, and soon Tom Anderson, known as the "King of Storyville," police lieutenant J. Picot, and even the mayor of New Orleans want him off the case. It's all the proof Valentin needs that there is something even larger and darker at the heart of this sordid business.
