On a lazy spring evening in 1951, two cases arrive at Private Eye Lucien Caye’s office in the New Orleans Lower French Quarter. The first is a murder case already solved by the New Orleans Police Department. The client believes NOPD arrested the wrong man. Yeah. Right. The second case – find who wrote a song recorded by a now defunct record label eleven years ago here in New Orleans, a song that is now a hit. There are royalties.

It is slow, plodding work, sifting through slim leads of a murder case full of deception and misdirection as the song from the second case, How Could You Leave Me, haunts Lucien. When a young, alluring, doe-eyed woman with auburn hair steps into Lucien’s life, trouble soon follows – gunplay, murder, mayhem, lust, maybe even love as Lucien learns why the song’s original title was Hold Me, Babe.

This is a classic 1950s private eye novel with good old American sex, violence and humor. A murder mystery featuring a character whose stories have won the The Private Eye Writers of America’s prestigious SHAMUS AWARD for BEST PRIVATE EYE SHORT STORY and The Short Mystery Fiction Society’s DERRINGER AWARD for BEST NOVELETTE.

Lucien Caye novels include New Orleans Rapacious and Enamored and the short story collection New Orleans Confidential.

Born in New Orleans, O’Neil De Noux is a prolific American writer of novels and short stories. Much of De Noux’s writing is character-driven crime fiction, although he has written in many disciplines including historical fiction, children’s fiction, mainstream fiction, science-fiction, suspense, fantasy, horror, western, literary, religious, romance, humor and erotica.