A well-to-do man is shot to death with a .45 slug fired by an unknown assailant in a long coat. The wax job takes place on the bad end of Rampart Street, in the virtual sound waves of a trumpet blowing a slow run of the new music, Jass. So many bad things happen in these parts in 1909 New Orleans that police interest is barely stirred--until they find out who the victim is.

It's around 15 months after French-Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr left New Orleans in a demoralized funk (in "Jass"). Author David Fulmer picks him up on his return to his old haunt, the red light district that a newspaper branded, "Storyville."

St. Cyr doesn't appear to be the man he was before he left but that doesn't stop his old boss Tom Anderson, the indisputable "King of Storyville" from giving him his old job back as the enforcer for his famed Basin Street Cafe' and Annex, controlling the rowdy behavior of rounders and cheats. But when he spots St. Cyr at the bar, he notes that his staff sleuth appears as unfocused and bedraggled as the miscreants he's supposed to be herding off the premises.

When the babbling Alphonse Badel, a local Alderman, comes to ask Anderson for a favor, we learn the identity of the murder victim on Rampart Street. Mr. John Benedict was a rich constituent of his ward. Being shot to death on Rampart Street makes no sense considering that the pillar of civility has never been known to be in such a place. What Badel is asking Anderson for are the services of his detective, St. Cyr. Anderson agrees to it if, for no other reason than to see if his tough employee still possesses his extraordinary skills of detection. Plus, of course, for whatever return favor he might need at a later time.

Still somewhat morose and dispirited, running at about half power, St. Cyr finds himself leaving the comforts of his new digs above his pal Frank Mangetta's Italian saloon and restaurant, where he's treated like Sicilian family, and into the sitting room of the Benedict mansion, being interviewed for his new job by family attorney Maurice Delouche, the dead man's regal widow Grace and daughter Anne Marie.

But St. Cyr isn't intimidated by the patrician airs or, even, by the prevailing grief. Unwilling to stroke the rich, he shocks the room by declaring that his services are a waste of time. After showing himself out, and being summoned by Tom Anderson for a little chat over his quick conclusions and tasteless actions, St. Cyr accepts the fact that he was rude and wrong. Tail between his legs, he appeals for forgiveness and for the job back. He "unquits."

But just as in the "Jass" case, the people who want him to uncover the reasons for a victim's murder will be the very ones who rue the day they ever thought they had to get at the truth. When St. Cyr uncovers the possibility that the case appears to involve one of the most corrupt and powerful men in the district, Henry Harris, everyone's ready to back off. Except our Creole investigator.

Harris may have been at the conception end of a great and deeply buried conspiracy, clues indicate. The mere potential that the remote and unscrupulous string-puller could be involved in some way inspires waves of fear that reach up into high quarters in the business and political trenches of the city. The usual purveyors of expediency try to stop the irresistible force they put into motion the day they gave St. Cyr his job back.

And, all the while St. Cyr is demonstrating that he never really lost his investigative skill, and that Benedict wasn't on Rampart Street for some extra-marital hanky panky, the sad investigator is dealing with threats to his life, to his job, and with his feelings about his ex-housemate Justine Mancerre, now operating as a high class prostitute at Antonia's bordello.

David Fullmer again gets us involved into his colorful, intent, vulnerable central figures' strain against a range of emotion we can all relate to even as we admire him for fearlessness and principle. Here's a charismatic man of unbending morality ready to throw himself into a lion's den of danger if that's what it takes to stop a seemingly invincible and unprincipled villain.

We become part of the inner turmoils that take our hero's issues beyond just the crimes involved, while we empathize with his difficulties of communicating his feelings. He's a guy who needs the warmth of friends and companions more than he realizes, and I was pleasantly surprised by the surrounding way the lone agent gets it, in the end, in a congregation of support.

My recommendation is not to just read this third Valentin St. Cyr novel. Read "Chasing the Devil's Tail" and "Jass" first. In that order.

Click to play an audio clip of the beginning of "Rampart Street."