Bourbon Street

By Leonce Gaiter

Book Overview

In 1958, gambler Deke Watley decides to leave the comfort and golden dust of Texas for the toxic chiaroscuro of Mardi Gras New Orleans: he smells the chance of a lifetime. It gets even better when this opportunity to win big collides with Hannah, a woman from his past--a woman he wronged--a wrong he's regretted ever since. Playing him in more ways than one is Alex Moreau, the half-black son of a notorious white racketeer. It's Alex's game, and he weaves the worst of his troubled past to create an orgy of vengeance, only to find that the other players have scores to settle, too. Amid the noise and the frenzy of the drunken crowds, streamers flying like electric currents, bejeweled costumes glittering, Deke stumbles through this foreign, lurid town, seeking a return to the innocence he turned his back on long ago. However, time is running out and old debts must be paid before Deke--or any other hustler--leaves Bourbon Street alive. This debut novel from Leonce Gaiter combines Walter Mosley's dark brushstrokes of postwar America with the best of the grifters and petty hustlers that populate Chester Himes, bringing a fresh voice to the African-American crime novel.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786714328
• ISBN13: 9780786714322
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

A new voice on the literary scene

Bourbon Street has been the center stage for incalculable stories. However, in Leonce Gaiter's debut novel of the same name, that infamous stretch of asphalt is merely window dressing for the true face of New Orleans to hide behind. It's Mardi Gras, 1958. Deke Wately steps from a Greyhound Bus into the wild and wicked carnival atmosphere. "Frenzy reigned on Bourbon Street. Barrel fires burned, and the bodies cavorting around them seemed as rapt as lewd priests at dead men's pyres. Deke couldn't take three steps without some drunk man or woman slamming into him. He was the only one on the street not ricocheting wildly with a rapacious smirk on his face or his private lusts smeared, draped, painted and sequined all over his body. Men and women screamed at the noise." Deke, a second-rate gambler and nomad, is uncomfortable in the masked city. But he's been invited to play in wealthy gangster August Moreau's personal game; the stakes are too high. As he enters the private L'hotel Moreau, he first meets the deformed Ray, who hides behind a mask; then Jimmy, the well-tailored, gun-toting bellman;, then Deke comes face to face with the book's real protagonist Alex, Moreau's mulatto son whose desire to revenge his mother's death drives him to the very edge of insanity. Alex shuffles the other players while he thrusts Deke at his father's mistress, the blonde bombshell, Hannah, as part of his revenge. Hannah. The girl Deke bedded and the woman he abandoned. Now that he's seen her again, "he wanted to savor that moment when they first caught of each other. She was his past, the bridge between who he was and who he was becoming. She was that piss-poor Texas town. She was his irreclaimable youth, his resting place." He heard she'd killed a man so Deke had more to worry about than an angry female. The narrative weaves between the debauchery of Bourbon Street, the Ten Spot Bar where Deke is sent to face more than Hannah's long-held wrath, and the L'hotel Moreau, where umpteen hidden agendas are waiting to be dealt and played. After a savage beating at the Ten Spot, Deke stumbles through the writhing crowd and back to the hotel. "He felt safe once he put his hand on the gate of the L'hotel Moreau. He didn't have the presence of mind to note the irony. What at first seemed foreign and frightening to him now had been supplanted by horrors far worse, that it had become a comfort." Deke watches in dismay as he learns that the game he came to play is more than cards and the hand he holds isn't a winner. Chapter One has too many similes for my taste but after that the narrative smooths out. The story is dense, much in the Faulknarian style with an intricate use of language, themes of racism, and clashing between the Old and New South. Yet the soul-stirring beat of jazz pulsates behind the words, forcing the pages apart. The true story of Bourbon Street lies in its shadows; the places Deke can't really see and the images Alex

Bravo! Great Debut!

Set in 1958 during Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street opens with Deke Watley, a nomadic gambler who has accepted an invitation to a high stakes Poker tournament sponsored by one of New Orleans's notorious residents, a blinded, aging gangster, August Moreau. Carnival is in full swing - filling the streets with a myriad of bejeweled masked strangers. However, when Deke meets his fellow opponents, he realizes they are as equally eccentric. Alex is August's angry, mulatto son from an island prostitute rumored to have dabbled in voodoo; Honey is the retired madam of one of the city's largest and most lucrative whorehouses; milquetoast Pritchett is August's lawyer and the keeper of secrets of all the dirty deeds; Pritchett's wife is a jealous whore-turned-housewife who has not changed her ways and finds pleasure in the backseats of cars along dark streets; and Hannah, a blonde bombshell, is August's young mistress and Deke's former love from a distant past. Although fairly short in length (169 pages), the suspense builds from the opening pages and accelerates as the plot thickens to involve all the above mentioned players (and others unnamed but equally enigmatic) to weave a tale of revenge, double-crossing, murder, and an unexpected finale (at least it was a surprise to me). The characters are wonderfully broken and tormented - each nursing their wounds as best they can. Gaiter's writing is strong as reflected in the vivid images he describes - I saw the atmospheric haze, I felt the heat, I heard the music, I inhaled the cigarette smoke, and I visualized the sweat dripping from the characters. He added more realism by carefully interlacing the complexities of race relations and social inequalities of the day amid the decadent backdrop of the Big Easy. I enjoyed the story and highly recommend it to those who might enjoy reading about this era and the suspense/crime genre. Reviewed by Phyllis APOOO BookClub Nubian Circle Book Club

Bourbon Street

5 stars Great period noir mood piece. Writer obviously knows the genre. There are tips of the hat here to films like "The Big Heat" and "Lady From Shanghai." Like in the movies, everything here is larger than life. It's an almost expressionistic vision of New Orleans through a really dark lens. I've read that Deke was the main character, the real main character is Alex. Half-black and wanting revenge against his own father, he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Through this character in 1958 (and others, particularly the women), the writer says a lot about privilege, power, and imprisonment, and how all of them can work together to tragic result.

Bourbon Street

"Loved this. This guy writes like the bastard of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson." A terrific read!

Bourbon Street

Intense, wicked fun. This book turns Mardi Gras into noir-ish feast of longing and vengeance. Ne'er-do-well gambler Deke Watley comes to New Orleans for an annual poker game, not knowing he's been invited by the half-mad, half-black son of a powerful white gangster. The son seeks revenge against his father for his mother's death, and seeks freedom from the velvet prison in which his father keeps him caged. He plans to use Deke as a pawn in his schemes. Add a couple of scheming women with plans of their own, and the game is set. Great atmosphere, interesting twists on the 1958 racial politics, and wonderfully written.