O'Neil de Noux Short Stories/Novellas
If you're going to commit murder - leave your dog at home. A John Raven Beau New Orleans Police Mystery.
A Short Story - In this tail of the old west, trail guide Willie Beedle is on a fool’s errand, taking a tenderfoot writer to the Dragoon Mountains in search of the elusive and vicious wild chihuahuas of old Arizona. A wonderful audio version of this story is available at www.sniplits.com. The story is read by Todd Busteed.
A Short Story that asks the question - How cruel are we? A law enforcement officer in a small Louisiana village learns a painful, illuminating lesson in human nature.
An original, never before published short story set in 1948. A woman is murdered in her home shortly after her husband takes out a large insurance policy. Her husband is an assistant district attorney and the cops quickly catch the killer (a hobo); but the insurance company is suspicious and hires New Orleans Private-Eye Lucien Caye to look into the matter. It turns out even the police are suspicious of their easy solution of the case, which puts Caye between the police, the DA’s office and the truth. Lucien Caye is the main character of O’Neil De Noux’s collection NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL, eleven stories including “Too Wise” – winner of The Short Mystery Fiction Society’s DERRINGER Award for Best Novelette and “The Heart Has Reasons” – winner of The Private Eye Writers of America’s SHAMUS Award for Best Short Story. O’Neil De Noux’s previous books include the LaStanza series of New Orleans Police novels, GRIM REAPER, THE BIG KISS, BLUE ORLEANS, CRESCENT CITY KILLS, THE BIG SHOW and LaSTANZA: NEW ORLEANS POLICE STORIES, as well as the sexy caper novel SLICK TIME, the John Raven Beau short story collection NEW ORLEANS NOCTURNAL; the erotic thriller MAFIA APHRODITE; a collection of erotic detective stories NEW ORLEANS IRRESISTIBLE; the double volume HOLLOW POINT & THE MYSTERY OF ROCHELLE MARAIS and the collection NEW ORLEANS MYSTERIES. In 2010, De Noux released a how-to book, A SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING AND SELLING FICTION.
An Erotic Short Story. James and Helen have had many adventures, but few as exciting or as sexy as their pursuit of the lost masterpiece of Edgar Degas, his magnificent NUDE IN MAGENTA. Set around Jackson Square in New Orleans, it is suspected the stolen painting is hidden in an apartment in the Pontalba House, said to be the oldest apartment buildings in North America. Two investigators use skill, guile, sex - anything to recover the beautiful painting of a nude woman reclining on a magenta daybed. Edgar Degas painted it in New Orleans when he lived here on Esplanade Avenue in 1872.
A Short Story. Something eerie is happening in the swamps of south Louisiana and journalist Jay Gatsby Jones, accompanied by photographer Jillian Jones (no relation), are sent from New Orleans to the bayous where they uncover an incredible secret.
A short story that appeared in the critically-acclaimed collection INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR (Akashic Books, 2010). A little about the story – He calls himself ‘The Wolf’ and he is cunning and ruthless and has gotten away with murder until he finds himself doggedly pursued by a most accomplished homicide detective – a man half-Cajun and half-Sioux, a predatory hunter of murderers, a man named John Raven Beau. Which one of these killers will kill again? Coming to the big city, the Paris of French Louisiana – New Orleans – John Raven Beau found a houseboat on Lake Pontchartrain and a vocation with the NOPD. He’s made good friends and done good work, yet his penchant for shooting people, people who give him no other choice, has made him stand out. He is a killer, blindly admired by rookies, avoided by veterans who have been on the job long enough to know a police officer who kills, especially who kill more than once, is an aberration. Homicide Detective John Raven Beau is a relentless pursuer, a man who will track a killer across miles of dark streets, through swamps, wastelands, over rivers and bayous. He will never give up. And he’s an excellent marksman who also carries an obsidian hunting knife. Claims that he’s scalped a few murderers is a persistent rumor. Look for: NEW ORLEANS NOCTURNAL (2010) a series of nine Beau stories. Not all of the stories occur at night, but each explores the darkest places in the murder capital of America and the dark recesses of the human heart. JOHN RAVEN BEAU (2011) a novel. Someone is ambushing police officers in New Orleans and a desperate search for the killer grips the department. A cop who hunts killers with methodical, calculating precision – innate in a man half-Cajun and half-Sioux, a man called John Raven Beau – quietly moves to the forefront in tracking down the killer.
New Orleans fixer Burleigh Drummond and Jodie Kintyre, a sexy New Orleans police detective, investigate theft and murder in the shadier-than-you-may-think antiques business. This mystery is a collaboration where Kent Westmoreland and O'Neil De Noux where merge their fictional universes.
The hardest part of committing a murder is getting away with it, especially when the case is assigned to a detective who is a relentless pursuer, a half-Cajun, half-Sioux investigator at the top of his game. The body of an elderly woman is discovered stuffed into her closet in her uptown mansion. Initial investigating officers find no leads, no suspects. NOPD Homicide Detective John Raven Beau focuses all of his senses, takes the necessary steps to determine time of death, cause of death, manner of death and most importantly, who killed her. The pursuit is methodical and calculated by a man who is a natural hunter, a man born and raised on a swamp, a man whose ancestors’ war cry echoes in his mind. Beau does not need to put on war paint to become a plain warrior. Woe-be-tide the killer. John Raven Beau is on the trial. If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more adventures of Detective John Raven Beau, you’ll want to read the new novel JOHN RAVEN BEAU and the short story collection NEW ORLEANS NOCTURNAL. Link: http://www.oneildenoux.net
Mr. Happer is pushing seventy, a skeleton-of-a-man with razor-sharp cheek bones, sunken cheeks and withered arms that gives him cadaverous appearance. Happer has the annoying habit of watching Agatha Christie’s DEATH ON THE NILE over and over again as he sits behind his desk. A wannabe Mafiosi, Happer runs a loan sharking operation along the wharves of New Orleans. His employees – wily Gordon Urquhart and the seductive Stella Dauphine – learn a painful lesson from the old man – that death cannot be denied.
The Date: September, 1947 The Location: Outdoor café in the seedy lower French Quarter of New Orleans The Players: Private Eye Lucien Caye and a fine-looking redhead in a tight, black skirt and a red blouse. Each are seated at a different table. The woman reaches up, taps down her sunglasses to peer over the top to gleek Lucien, who taps his own sunglasses down and gleeks her right back. Her name is Alice Grey and she wants to hire Lucien to find the man who murdered her uncle, a yellow cab driver. He quickly learns it isn’t as it seems as the woman beds him and he discovers there was no murdered cab driver. Alice changes her story, wants him to find her missing father. That story’s a phony too. What now, my love? Mounties? From Canada? What the hell do the Royal Canadian Mounted Police want?
FOR HALLOWEEN we offer two ghost stories for the price of one. “The Shadow of White Death” – City Park Police in New Orleans do not have a dangerous beat, except for the occasional apparition, nebulous images of people who met untimely deaths in the large, urban park. Is the young woman with long black hair and wearing a white gown real or an unearthly spirit? “Vermilion Bay” – In Acadiana, Cajuns learn how to fish as naturally as learning how to walk. Catching catfish is expected, a World War I bi-plane flown by a pretty green-eyed woman with reddish-brown hair landing next to Vermilion Bay is not.
A haunting romance, an obsession with a beautiful woman, a thundering heart that feels as if it will burst is played out against the backdrop of Tchaikovsky and Bizet. Is that a derringer in her hand? Intermezzo – a short movement separating the major sections of a musical composition. Intermezzo – a short movement separating the halves of a life spent yearning. As lagniappe, also offered is another haunting piece that begins with someone throwing a party in the New Orleans morgue on Christmas Eve.
Sam hasn’t seen Tyler in nineteen years but when she steps into the Klamath Hotel in the little town of Grayville, Kansas, nestled between the Big Blue and Little Blue Rivers, her blue eyes are just as lovely, just as warm. Theirs is an unfulfilled romance from high school and the world has turned around to give them a second chance. Only Tyler knows better. There is a hidden, dark, secret that will limit their time together. But, for the moment, they have each other.
In the village of Cannes Bruleé, Louisiana, death by drowning in nearby Vermilion Bay or one of the many bayous is not uncommon. A body found with bite marks from an alligator – again, not uncommon. A body with a rope burn on its leg and a gash across its belly speaks of another word – homicide. NOPD Homicide Detective John Raven Beau travels to his home town for the funeral of a favorite teacher, who drowned in Crooked Bayou. He is approached by an old classmate, Barbara Dreaux, now a police officer with the Cannes Bruleé Police Department, who asks for his help. “I think our old teacher was murdered.” Beau is a good choice for the case. He knows the chief suspect well and his innate skills as a relentless pursuer will drive him to find out exactly what happened. And who did it.
September, 1948. It sounds like an easy gig for New Orleans private eye Lucien Caye. Escort a pretty lady to the bayous to confirm her father had died accidentally. Gator got him. Ann Kinzer does not believe it was an accident and brings Lucien to see an old crone called The Chula who tells an unbelievable story about the descendants of slaves who lived in the holds of slave ships, escaped into the swamp. They are as white as sheets, bulging eyes, long fangs, fingernails like talons. Zombies? No. They are Bluegums. Lucien and Ann make a chilling discovery – old tales are sometimes based on the truth.
A Horrifying Mystery. Homicide Detective Harry Roberts had seen a lot of bodies but nothing like the dismembered woman lying just outside a cemetery in the middle of the night. His partner, Det. Lydia Brown, proves to be a determined, focused hunter as she leads the way in finding the killer who may be as inhuman as what he did to the victim he left with a few pieces missing.
Planet Octavion, a bright blue-green orb that lies along the backwash of the Milk Way, is magnificent in its beauty – from the Cobalt Sea to the Cinnamon Hills, from the Spearmint Forest to the Majestic Blue River. Its beauty masks incredible dangers from diverse, indigenous fauna and flora. Even the peaceful Terra Cotta Plateau masks deadly secrets. Three rambunctious boys decide the great caverns of Russet Butte beckon to be explored and begin an adventure that quickly turns into a struggle for survival. “Tracks of Shining White” is an off-world, science-fiction adventure story, a throwback to the pulps. If you like this story, you’ll want to check out the new collection of Octavion stories – BACKWASH OF THE MILKY WAY by O’Neil De Noux.
The worst hour is the last before getting off because anything can happen when you’re a homicide detective. NOPD Det. John Raven Beau, sneaking home just before knocking off the midnight watch, catches a murder case within walking distance of his houseboat. The body of a waitress from one of the restaurants lining Lake Pontchartrain is found strangled beneath an oak tree in a parking lot. Everyone knows the first 24-hours after a murder are the most critical, so getting some much-needed sleep is not an option. A canvass locates no witnesses but the victim scratched her killer, as some of his skin beneath her broken fingernails. True to his Sioux heritage, Beau begins a relentless pursuit of the killer. Sleep can wait. There’s a murderer to catch.
September, 1947. A young brunette with dark brown eyes stands shivering in the rain, a pretty blonde poses in a bikini. There is also a desperate boyfriend and a murdered doctor – all drawing New Orleans Private Eye Lucien Caye into a case that may end with the first woman in Louisiana to be executed in the electric chair.
Three love stories by New Orleans writer O’Neil De Noux Cover art by Martha Landry “Language of the Heart” How would you feel, if you knock on the door of the house of the girl you should have married twenty-five years ago and she answers the door and looks the same as she did all those years ago? “Five Days Left” Time is 1968 and a soldier ends his last love letter to his wife with an old Cajun saying, “If I have only five days to live, I’d give up three to spend the two with you. With us, Babe, It should be – If I have only five days to live, I’d give up four to spend one with you.” And the soldier does just that. “The Stuff of Dreams” World War II veteran Sergeant Leo Minosa has come from Wyoming to New Orleans to meet the woman whose image he painted on his B-24 bomber – Louisiana Lullaby. She is the stuff of his dreams.
A short story featuring NOPD Detective Jodie Kintyre (former partner of NOPD's Homicide Detective Dino LaStanza) Less than a month after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a bigger bitch of a storm – Hurricane Rita slams into Louisiana just west of the city. Some of the levees are breaking again. Streets are flooding. A young man jumps off a five-story hotel in the French Quarter with a suicide note in his pocket. Detective Jodie Kintyre reads the note which instructs her to go to an address on Dumaine Street where the jumper has left his girlfriend. They met the day before Hurricane Katrina – Michael and Amanda – and fell in love. Huddled in an apartment with no electricity or running water they survived in their ‘cave’ with their ‘K Love’ – a love spawned by a killer hurricane. What went wrong? What drove Michael to kill her, then himself? If that’s what happened.
A lady park ranger at the Battle of New Orleans National Park spots a man in a British army uniform at 2 a.m. He stands next to one of the cannons and she thinks he’s one of those re-enactors who come to re-enact the battle every January 8th. She approaches and fog moves in and he’s no longer there. When he comes back the next 2 a.m., he tells her he’s Arthur and she is Frances, the lass he left behind in Scotland. Something in his eyes convinces her – he believes what he says, he believes he died on this battlefield two hundred years ago. And she sees in his eyes what she’s been searching for all her lonely years.
"Effect on Men" 2017 DERRINGER Finalist for the “Best Long Story” Monday, April 7, 1947, and a long cool blonde walks into New Orleans Private Eye Lucien Caye’s office. Patricia Ruxton is a Lana Turner lookalike. Her angry, rich husband is with her. The job – retrieve letters and pictures from Mrs. Ruxton’s former boyfriend. Locating the former boyfriend isn’t hard, he works at a nearby gas station. First problem – he’s a disabled veteran. Second problem – he isn’t giving the pictures and letters back. He still loves Patricia. Patricia understands. She has Lucien arrange a tearful meeting where Patricia decides her old boyfriend can keep the pictures and letters. She explains she has an effect on men. Not just some men, but all men. Lucien feels it as well – the magnetic attraction. Is she coming on to Lucien? He wonders as he gets a late night call. The former boyfriend is dead and his place is ransacked. Is it suicide or did the angry husband kill him or is it something else entirely? TWO stories for the price of one. Both 2017 DERRINGER AWARD Finalists. DERRINGER AWARDS are given annually by the Short Mystery Fiction Society to recognize excellence in short mystery fiction "A Just Reward" 2017 DERRINGER Finalist for “Best Flash Story” A stranger comes into the small town sheriff’s office with information that leads to the recovery of a stolen statue. He understands there’s a reward. There’s a problem, however.