SMFS list member O’Neil De Noux latest book, The
Spy Who Used My Love: A Private Eye Mystery is now out in print and
eBook formats. This is the sixth book in the Lucien Caye Private Eye
Series that began with New Orleans Rapacious. The read is
available at Amazon.
Synopsis:
The wife of an old army buddy hires New Orleans
Private Eye Lucien Caye. She knows her husband has the occasional girlfriend,
but he might be doing something dangerous at work, something that might land
him in jail or worse. Lucien confirms there’s a girlfriend involved but the
case rapidly whirls out of control with lies, deceptions, espionage, a murder,
a suicide, a Soviet spy and a mystifying femme fatale. The confusing case draws
in the FBI and CIA as Lucien is interrupted by another friend who found $20,000
hidden in a window seat of his apartment and a strange man who hires Lucien to
investigate the growing Beat Generation in New Orleans as well as a nudist
colony across Lake Pontchartrain. Lucien and his alluring wife, the exquisite
Alizée – now a PI – need all their moxie to sift through these cases before
someone else dies.
About Lucien Caye: Lucien Caye works in the run-down
New Orleans French Quarter of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike most
P.I.s, Caye rarely drinks, doesn’t smoke and only wears a hat only when
necessary (it messes up his hair). He’s six feet tall with wavy, dark brown
hair and standard-issue Mediterranean-brown eyes, a sly smile and a clever mind
that often gets him into trouble.He has a weakness for women, children and
fellow World War II veterans, down on their luck. He knows how to make a decent
living but often finds himself working pro-bono – in one case working to find a
little girl’s missing cat, in another searching for a boy’s runaway father and
in yet another, canvassing the Quarter for the child who wrote a note to Santa
Claus, asking Santa to take him to live with the angels so his mother and
father didn’t have to buy food for him anymore. They don’t have much money.Born
in New Orleans of French and Spanish descent, Caye attended Holy Cross High
School before working as a copy boy, then cub reporter for The New Orleans Item.
A stint as a crime reporter drew Caye to law enforcement and he joined the New
Orleans Police Department in 1939 where he was a patrol officer working uptown
until December 7, 1941.Caye joined the U.S. Army serving in North Africa,
Sicily and the subsequent Italian campaign at Anzio and Salerno. At the Battle
of Monte Cassino, Caye met and befriended journalist Ernie Pyle during the
bitter stalemate. Leading an assault on the infamous monastery, Caye was
seriously wounded by a German sniper and sent home with a Purple Heart medal
and a Silver Star for bravery.After the war, he returned to the police
department, working the French Quarter beat until deciding he preferred working
alone and set up shop in 1947 in an apartment building at the corner of Barracks
and Dauphine Streets, not far from the fictional residence of Tennessee
Williams’s Stanley Kowalski. Living upstairs, Caye’s office faces Barracks
Street and the small Cabrini Playground Park across the narrow street.In 1950,
Lucien falls in love three times (see novel ENAMORED) as a seven year old girl
changes his life. In 1951, an alluring, auburn-haired, doe-eyed beauty named
Alizée enters Lucien’s life and things change again for this hardboiled private
eye (see novel HOLD ME, BABE). ENAMORED and HOLD ME, BABE were finalists for
the Private Eye Writers of America SHAMUS AWARD – awarded annually by the
Private Eye Writers of America to recognize outstanding achievement in private
eye fiction. Other Caye books include the collection NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL
and novels NEW ORLEANS RAPACIOUS, DAME MONEY and WALKIN’ THE BLUES.
