In this second fictional outing (after eight nonfiction titles and 1929: A Novel of the Jazz Age
), Turner evokes the debauchery of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century with intoxicating period detail. The grip of longtime vice lord Tom Anderson on the Storyville District's diversions of booze, half-hour whores and high-class brothels is challenged by the arrival of the Parker brothers, whose gangster money and thug muscle have Anderson's crew looking over their shoulders. Francis "Fast-Mail" Muldoon, the lost-soul protagonist, was a champion runner as a boy (hence the nickname) and then a city cop, before he was crippled in a shooting and falsely accused of cowardice; now he's Anderson's "man about town." But he's reluctant to be drawn into the escalating turf war, and his loyalty to the man who gave him a job after he hit bottom shatters when he uncovers his boss's ongoing romance with a young saloon singer (the object of Muldoon's own stunted affections) whom Anderson had first taken as a lover when she was his teenaged stepdaughter. Fast-Mail's redemption in the bloody finale is the soul-warming center of this emotionally complex page-turner. Turner's sense of time and place—including a cameo by real-life prostitute photographer Bellocq—imbue the novel with atmosphere as steamy as a New Orleans summer day. (Nov.)
