New Orleans Noir - Mardi Gras Anyone?

[leonceg]

Hello all,

Just wanted to introduce myself and the noir thriller BOURBON STREET. Published in hardcover by Carroll & Graf in '05, it got very well reviewed by dumped by the publisher. The rights reverted to me when that publishing house got absorbed, so I can now make it available in multiple e-book formats! You can read more about it, including reviews, at www.leoncegaiter.com. It's a noir thriller set in 1958 New Orleans. Nasty, brutish and short in the Jim Thompson vein. Description below:

"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."

Dick Adler of Chicago Tribune says:
"...New Orleans has long been a streetcar straight to a mystery lover's heart. Now comes a debut book by Leonce Gaiter that deserves a place on that map."

John Broussard of I Love a Mystery says:
"Gaiter manages to keep the reader guessing up to the last... a riveting tale of inter-racial hatred and its effects on both blacks and whites."

Kirkus Reviews says:
"The ensuing cycle of Mardi Gras violence is set forth in prose by turns as grandiloquent as Faulkner and clipped and stylized to a fare-thee-well."

If you'd like to check it out, hope you enjoy!