The third Valentin St. Cyr mystery, set in early-20th Century New Orleans, finds the Creole detective tasked by the King of Storyville Tom Anderson to investigate the murder of a wealthy shipping magnate in that infamous red-light district. The case should be a simple one, but things don't add up. When the victim's daughter urges him to pursue the truth, no matter what, and when a business partner of the victim also turns up dead, Valentin finds himself out of his element, putting more than himself at risk.

This time, the whodunit isn't as much of a mystery as the why. With New Orleans as much a character as the people who live there, this is a quick read. I'm enjoying spending time there with them and am happy there are four more installments in the series. ( )

This is a historical romance, not a detective novel--without much on the cover to let you know the difference. The book, though, has tender feelings. Beware. Women's hearts flutter! Adverbs proliferate. The book does try to be tough. It says "fuck," kills people, has examples of blunt force action, but it's a softie, almost a cozy. I don't mind them for others, but I want to be warned, so I don't buy one.

Now the good news if you picked up the book, Fulmer seems to know the old New Orleans. The times when jazz started. Where Bellocq took photos of the ladies. Where crime was fun. And deadly. But Fulmer writes a bit too politely about the other side of the streetcar tracks for my tastes.

Now here’s a mystery with literary aspirations, noir aspirations, and it’s almost good. It’s one of those books where I wonder if the problem isn’t editorial in origin rather than authorial. Mostly, I liked the book.
New Orleans, 1910, creole detective passes for white. Shady, menacing characters. Mysterious women and a potential femme fatale. Portrait of race and class conflict. Fulmer does a good job painting the dirty, dangerous streets of NOLA’s red-light district. But he tripped up on one of my pet peeves: If, as a writer, you’re going to have your characters wander up X Street, saunter down rue Y, cartwheel across Z Blvd and everywhere else in a city, and especially if you’re going to name your book after a geographical area and set it way back in history, would it kill you to add a map? I swear it makes my blood pressure go up. Damned annoying.
But other than that, the characters were pretty well drawn and definitely intriguing. The problem was in the pacing, the plotting. I broke one of the major clues clearly before I should have and I never try to. Also, I was reading the book steadily and then I took a loooong break about ¾ to the end. You really don’t want that to happen in your mystery novel. I love reading about New Orleans and I love mysteries. Maybe if Fulmer hadn’t decided to write a mystery. Valentin St. Cyr, a lovely name, pronounced French, is billed as the possessor of extraordinary detecting skills. Sherlock he’s not. He did little that other fictitious detectives don’t do, and in some cases, a good deal less.
I might give Fulmer another try—Valentin is an interesting guy—but only if I have reason to believe that any of his other books are more put-together. ( )