Having lived in New Orleans for over a decade—those years of stumbling up and down the broken, midnight-hour cobblestone streets and secret pathways; the array of characters and endless meld of voices encountered; the archeological layers of decaying artifact amid ghostly generation, reaching back to its primeval mud, cut in twain by that great river; and the endless simmering afternoons tucked breathing the forgotten dusty air of archive and tome—I discovered a lot of what passed for popular consumption of that place, whether in books or movies or whatever other public revelatory outlet was used, somehow, quite often, failed to capture that unique essence I found most endearing and alluring. Beyond Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras, beyond the manufactured hype and sensation, the Isle of Orleans, I discovered, was a physical treasure trove (as much as a gold-veined state of mind) of the best and worst of humanity, and the awful and wonderful vagaries of our existence. But unique, in its own way. Certainly, a city, a place, of mysteries, secrets and enigmas. A setting as elusive, complex and often as dangerous, as Paul Bowles’ Tangier. Exotic is not an adjective one usually associates with the United States. New Orleans is exotic. Certain rules it lives by are different than anywhere else in America. That makes it appealing to a certain type.
The most delicious corruptions of life—of experiencing our rather pathetically brief moment of existence in its purest static and kinetic forms—are practiced there as a fine art, a badge of existential honor amidst the pack. While using politician and corruption in the same sentence is a redundancy, at least in New Orleans we’re usually not subjected to the more elusive sanctimonious weasels abounding elsewhere in the land of the free and home of the brave. If you live there long enough and happen to learn local-speak, you know the latest crop of elected crooks are crooks because they show and tell you they are. They take care of their own. And, dawlin’, if you don’t like it—well, hopefully, your crooks will do better next time, awright?
New Orleans has always been a magnet for the world’s tainted Crayola box of social outcasts, cultural vagabonds and human flotsam extraordinaire, in general. In the middle of the 19th century, when the Sicilian mafia felt the heat of the newly rising Italian government and began to look toward America for safer grounds to spread their own unique brand of toxic manure, need we guess that most ideal of locations of opportunity they chose? Of course, they came first to The Big Easy, and why not? Immigrants had already been pouring into the French Quarter, turning the once lush and lovely Creole neighborhood into a decaying slum they called Little Palermo. As well, the live-and-let-live attitude of those other stiffer-lipped natives raised little alarm. At least, in the beginning, before they (the foreign outlaws as well as local big-boss politicians) became too frisky. After all, when you’ve survived hands-of-God hurricane and flood, consuming fire and epidemic disease; when the duel, the fisticuffs or assassin’s bullet are your preferred method of agreeing to disagree and Voodoo your religion of choice, what were a few more naughty eccentrics just trying to make their groceries and get by?
When I began writing my historical mystery French Quarters, much of the impetus was to try and capture this exoticism and uniqueness of place and share it with readers that may know and even love (as I do) this tawny-tropic little collection of faubourgs, but not be aware of the more interesting underbelly. This was quirky world-building, I found. This was making gumbo with the most tantalizing ingredients of unknown origin.