O'Neil de Noux Short Story Collections
This collection of 17 stories mark the genesis and early development of Dino LaStanza, the hard-bitten, wise-cracking New Orleans police detective in O'Neil DeNoux's critically-acclaimed murder mystery/police story series. Besides LaStanza: New Orleans Police Stories, fans of LaStanza have also encountered him in previous novels like The Big Kiss, Grim Reaper, Blue Orleans, Crescent City Kills and The Big Show.
Come prowl the lonely, sometimes violent streets of America's most exotic city, the city that care forgot, New Orleans, with a lone-wolf private eye named Lucien Caye. Caye lives and works in the run-down New Orleans French Quarter of the late 1940s. Women float in and out of Caye's life, like the alluring brunette who wants him to bodyguard her while she poses for sexy pictures. Murder is often the name of the game and Caye sometimes leaves town for the gulf coast or the swamps of southern Louisiana in pursuit of the truth, usually aiding a pretty woman in need of help, in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the truth is often ugly, often dangerous and usually resides on the loneliest part of town.
This NEW collection of mystery stories set in New Orleans features O'Neil De Noux's recurring characters - 1940s Private-eye Lucien Caye, 1890s NOPD Detective Jacques Dugas as well as NOPD Homicide Detectives John Raven Beau and Dino LaStanza (he's back!). There are also a couple ghost stories, a maniac story, the gold bug of Jean Lafitte, a man with moon hands and a future-cop story with a guy named Max.
NEW ORLEANS NOCTURNAL is a series of nine short stories featuring New Orleans Police Homicide Detective John Raven Beau. Half-Cajun and Half-Sioux, 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. Nocturnal. Occurring at night. Darkness. Not all of these stories occur at night, but each explores the darkest places in the murder capital of America and the dark recesses of the human heart. Come spend some time with John Raven Beau. He'll show you a few things. STORIES INCLUDE: "Love and Murder" * "Don't Make Me Take Off My Sunglasses" * "Murder Most Sweet" * "When the Levees Break" * "Pretty Rita" and "The Bonnie and Clyde Caper" - runner-up for The Short Mystery Fiction Society's 2009 DERRINGER AWARD for 'Best Long Story'.
New Orleans Irresistible – Erotic Mystery Fiction In the hands of crime fiction writer O’Neil De Noux, these genre-blending journeys are part mystery, part science-fiction, part suspense, but all erotic. Roam the steamy streets of America’s erotic capital where you’ll meet a hot temptress who just might be an hallucination, bored housewives getting nude massages in public, a private eye ogling some kissable cleavage, a deliciously dangerous trek on the wild side of town, a pair of erotic vampires, a conveniently windblown skirt and the legendary Gold Bug of Jean Lafitte. For the record – she’s not big and there’s nothing easy about New Orleans. The old nickname, City That Care Forgot is closer to the truth, but trying to explain or label New Orleans with words has eluded writers for over two-hundred ninety-three years. As Rome is to Europe, New Orleans is America’s Eternal City. She can’t be changed, can’t die, can’t be flooded into submission or blown away by hurricanes. Her people can be scattered but they’ll return and others will come to be seduced by New Orleans, because New Orleans is an idea, an emotion, a unique way of life with such delicious pleasure, she’s – irresistible. She’s America’s Erotic Capital. Ernie Pyle once wrote, “They say that when you get within a hundred miles you begin to feel a little drunk on just the idea of New Orleans.” The greatest crime-fiction writer of our time, Elmore Leonard, who was born in New Orleans, put it succinctly in Tishomingo Blues when a character explained, “People born and raised in New Orleans only move if they’re forced to.” Yeah, and they usually find a way to come back. I wrote this introduction in for the first edition of this book in 2006 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Katrina deposited me. But I never left New Orleans in mind and spirit. I can never leave New Orleans, even if I’m not physically there. Eventually I meandered back, settling on the north side of that evil Lake Pontchartrain (you know, the one that flooded the city), to hilly land above sea-level, so my new house won’t get flooded when the levees break again. I can drive into the city whenever I feel like it because, baby, New Orleans ain’t goin’ nowhere. The stories in this collection are about pleasure. They are also about other passions – obsession, fear, exhibitionism, love and murder, sex and violence, you know – modern day America. Again quoting Ernie Pyle, “New Orleans hungers for pleasure, and has it, and let him beware who tries to interfere.” Come experience the steamy side of irresistible New Orleans. O’Neil De Noux May 2011
primeval original, primitive, ancient or resembling the earliest ages in the history of the world, of feelings or actions based on primitive instinct as in raw and elementary primeval forest earliest, first, prehistoric, pristine primeval fear innate, inborn, instinctive, primitive, basic, primordial, intuitive, inherent, basic The prime evil faced by police officers in a city described in a local newspaper in the Nineteenth Century as Hell on Earth – is murder. From the autumn of 1887 through the summer of 1891, New Orleans Police Detective Jacques Dugas investigates the most intricate cases of mayhem and murder – The city’s most notorious madame is stabbed to death; a hulking simian killer lurks along the rooftops of the French Quarter; a blood-splattered woman dances around the body of her husband and maniacally laughs, “I did it! I did it!”; bodies of tortured men are found along fog-shrouded streets; the death of innocence plays out when a visitor on her honeymoon is strangled, a New Orleans beauty is found murdered; a missing woman case turns into a complicated mystery; the Gold Bug of Jean Lafitte draws hidden desires; killers killing killers; the severed hand of a murder victim points to her murderer. Det. Jacques Dugas, the lone French detective on a police force dominated by the Irish at the end of the Nineteenth Century, is called ‘the smart one’. Cerebral. A thinker. Yet, you will see he is quick to act with controlled aggression when necessary and persistent enough to remain focused on the case and not get distracted by a pretty woman, petty cops hell bent on revenge, or a case that seems unsolvable, as in “Maria’s Hand.” He is a quiet, lonesome man, focused on the job and yet – he knows, one day he’ll find her. There’s a woman out there for him. After all, he’s a Frenchman. Two of the short stories in this collection are new, never published before. “A Willing Lad” is a chilling tale while “Worthy of Love” is as sad as the Edgar Allan Poe poem that introduces it. Included in New Orleans Prime Evil are my four stories inspired by the four mysteries written by the man who created the modern detective story, and my literary inspiration – Edgar Allan Poe. His voice resonates through the book. My stories are nothing like Poe’s except for my tipping my hat with the titles, a salute if you want to call it that. The inspiration drove me to create Jacques Dugas. I hope you enjoy his exploits.
Eleven Science Fiction adventure stories, throwbacks to the pulp days of off-world exploration and colonization on a dazzling, mysterious, dangerous planet. Four never-before published stories are included with stories that appeared in top publications – Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Tomorrow Speculative Fiction Magazine, Gorezone Magazine, Oceans of the Mind Magazine, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination Magazine, Adventure Anthology and Cricket Children’s Magazine. Along the backwash of the Milky Way Galaxy lies a sun-kissed planet Earthlings call Octavion, a world of sparkling blue oceans, emerald green forests, bright deserts and blue-green lakes. The size of Earth, with a similar star for its sun, Octavion is moonless with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, a planet of colors so vivid they amaze humans. During the day, the Octavion sun raises the temperature into the nineties Fahrenheit. With a nearly non-existent polar tilt, the seasons change so little, they are barely recognized. At night, billowy clouds turn magenta then a deep reddish purple before sinking into a dark indigo before blackness. The stars seem brighter in the moonless sky than on Earth. The first humans marvel at the beauty of the planet and name its natural wonders for their vivid colors – Cerulean Sea, Cobalt Sea, Sapphire Sea and rivers called Majestic Blue and Royal Blue. The leaves of Magenta Forest are magenta as the bright leaves of the Spearmint Forest reflect that hue. The trees of the Indigo Forest are covered with pale, blue leaves. The stone beneath Lake Violet give its water a purplish cast, limestone of Emerald Lake is green, reflected in his clear water. There is a Copper Plateau and a Terra Cotta Plateau, multi-colored Calico Hills and Cinnamon Hill, the orange-brown color of cinnamon. Riding the Right of Habitation Act, which gives humans the right to colonize any inhabitable world, people flock to the beautiful planet, only to quickly discover its secret. Octavion is populated by creatures very much like the beasts Earthlings call dinosaurs. Scientist cannot explain this phenomenon. Humans come with their computers and other machines and the inevitable clash of worlds begins, native species edged aside by Earthlings and their farms and ranches, their cows and chickens and horses, cats and dogs. After thirty years, the Indigenous Creature Act is passed to protect native species, giving them the right of way in most instances. Such is the setting. I hope you enjoy these Science Fiction Adventure Stories.
This is New Orleans – 1984. The search is on for a heinous criminal. A rapist on early release from prison tracks down his victim and attacks her again. The New Orleans Police Department goes into a frenzy trying to find this man who shoots one of his cop pursuers and keeps running. NOPD Homicide Detectives Dino LaStanza and Jodie Kintyre set up a stakeout on a family member of the criminal and wait with their handcuffs and .357 magnums. LaStanza, a Sicilian-American living-example of the Wyatt Earp Syndrome – cops who kill criminals rather than apprehend them – has loaded his weapon with semi-jacketed hollow point rounds against regulations and waits patiently. Like a leopard. The exploits of NOPD Detective LaStanza can be found in the short story collection LaSTANZA: NEW ORLEANS POLICE STORIES and in the eight novels in the ongoing LaStanza series: GRIM REAPER, THE BIG KISS, BLUE ORLEANS, CRESCENT CITY KILLS, THE BIG SHOW, NEW ORLEANS HOMICIDE, THE BLUE NUDE and THE LONG COLD. Born in New Orleans, O’Neil De Noux writes character-driven crime fiction, although he has been published in many disciplines including historical fiction, mainstream fiction, science-fiction, suspense, fantasy, horror, western, literary, children’s fiction, young adult, religious, romance, humor and erotica. His fiction has garnered several awards: the SHAMUS AWARD for Best Short Story, the DERRINGER AWARD for Best Novelette and the 2011 POLICE BOOK OF THE YEAR. Recurring characters in his work include New Orleans Police Detectives Dino LaStanza (1980s), Jacques Dugas (1890s), John Raven Beau (21st Century) and as well as Private Eye Lucien Caye (1940-50s). De Noux served as Vice-President of the Private Eye Writers of America in 2013. Historical novels include BATTLE KISS, an epic set at the Battle of New Orleans, as well as USS RELENTLESS, a nautical saga of a US Naval officer during the Barbary War of 1803 through the War of 1812, and DEATH ANGELS, a novel of World War II. Other non-series novels include MISTIK (young adult), BOURBON STREET (crime suspense), SLICK TIME (caper), MAFIA APHRODITE (erotica). Collections include NEW ORLEANS MYSTERIES, NEW ORLEANS IRRESISTIBLE, NEW ORLEANS NOCTURNAL (police procedural stories), NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL (1940’s private eye stories) and BACKWASH OF THE MILKY WAY (science fiction). His web site is www.oneildenoux.net.