From the millions of French Quarter revelers each year to the neglected, miserable housing projects, New Orleans offers visitors and residents a chance to escape everyday life but some get caught in the centuries-old crime cycle or the post-Katrina heartbreak.
This juxtaposition of innate beauty and cultural joy mixed with hopelessness and bureaucracy creates a setting perfect for murder, whether in a 19th century alley made infamous by dueling or for a seedy bar filled with those ready for trouble.
These are some of the authors whose passion for the city creates incredible mysteries that should not be overlooked by mystery and crime fiction readers.
African-American Mysteries Set in New Orleans
The meshing of French, Spanish, African and other cultures has created an unusual environment for both religious and racial realms in New Orleans.
Tapping into this, Barbara Hambly’s well-researched series with Benjamin January, a free man in 19th century Crescent City, encapsulates the contradictions of a society with wealthy Creoles and the enslaved African-Americans serving them.
The January series remains much more than a discussion of race, however, and A Free Man of Color and Fever Season show January as a resourceful, multi-dimensional character who acts with honor. In Sold Down the River, January chooses to go undercover as a slave, sparking the embers of a painful childhood but revealing his dedication to solving the mystery.
David Fulmer and Valentin St. Cyr
David Fulmer’s private detective Valentin St. Cyr roams New Orleans in the early part of the twentieth century, leaving behind any romantic visions of the transition from the Victorian period to the years preceding World War I.
Filled with jazz and prostitutes, St. Cyr’s world in Jass and Rampart Street exposes New Orleans’ long history of organized crime and rough characters, all punctuated by the ubiquitous music that defines the city.
James Lee Burke and the Big Easy
James Lee Burke’s series featuring Dave Robicheaux often centers on the small South Louisiana town of New Iberia, but Robicheaux’s investigations periodically take him back to the Big Easy. Once a busy NOPD homicide detective, Robicheaux reconnects with old friends and established enemies in Purple Cane Road and Dixie City Jam.
Burke’s haunting novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, depicts New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina decimates the city and Robicheaux’s descriptions should not be missed.
Haunting Short Stories of New Orleans
Julie Smith’s anthology New Orleans Noir offers a collection of short stories by 18 authors separated into the pre-Katrina era tellingly titled “Before the Levees Broke” and the post-Katrina time, fittingly called “Living in Atlantis.” Grim and gritty, New Orleans Noir shows what the TV cameras and the tourism ads miss. This book can be purchased for Kindle.
Mardi Gras Mysteries
For a lighter look at New Orleans, Mardi Gras Madness: Tales of Terror and Mayhem in New Orleans (edited by Russell Davis and Martin Harry Greenburg) includes 11 short stories by various authors with supernatural themes in addition to mysterious murders. Published in 2000, New Orleans appears in all of its decadent glory no matter which decade.
New Orleans as Character
New Orleans proves to be an ideal setting for mysteries with its clash and ultimate melding of cultures, religion and ideals which somehow make the most unbelievable tale seem possible, because the true crime throughout this city’s history inspires mysteries as multi-faceted as the city itself.
Bonnye Good - Bonnye Busbice Good received an Editor's Choice award for her article on Your Historic Home's Interior Design Secrets and has also written ...
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