Rampart Street

by: David Fulmer

Published by: Harcourt January 2006

Reviewed by Susan Meissner

Fulmer's melancholy but intriguing Valentin St. Cyr, a detective of Creole descent with obvious regrets, returns to New Orleans in Rampart Street, to solve the murder of a well-to-do man found dead in the seediest part of town.

While poking his nose in the affairs of the wealthy and the wild in his search for the truth, St. Cyr unravels a plot by a racist mover-and-shaker who is none too happy at the Creole's intrusions.

As the detective gets closer and closer to uncovering the truth, other men in the loop wind up dead, and even St. Cyr finds himself a marked man.

The New Orleans setting for Rampart Street is poignantly timed--as Fulmer's wonderful turn-of-the-century descriptions of this famed city, battle against with what we know happened there during the 2005 hurricane season.

Indeed, the strength of the story is in its detailed descriptions and multi-layered characterizations--the only hitches here being the occasional, current-day expletives, which seem to yank the reader back to the present each time they are used. The pace is an easy one, not driving and yet not sluggish and the point-of-view transitions are fluid and seamless.

Armchair Interviews says: Rampart Street will appeal to mystery lovers who are comfortable with a tale that doesn't spare them the aspects of life in a troubled red-light district, where tensions are often high, morals are often low and men wind up dead.