A money-hungry ex-soldier in Civil War New Orleans is seduced into a web of treason and temptation in this novel by “one of the greats of American noir” (The Guardian). The Union has captured New Orleans, and Bill Cresap has come to reap the profits. A school friend has a line on some easy money, and Cresap is eager to make his fortune. But when he lands in the Crescent City, still nursing a leg wound from Chancellorsville, he finds that his friend has vanished and taken their start-up capital with him. Just when despair threatens to overpower Cresap, Mignon Fournet arrives to overwhelm him instead. A Creole widow with rebel sympathies and hopeful eyes, she has come to Cresap in desperate need. The army has arrested her father and she will do whatever it takes to find out where he’s detained and what he’s charged with. She begs Cresap to use his army connections to find him. Cresap soon discovers that the stakes are sky high: Fournet’s father shipped supplies to the Confederate commander and could pay for this treason with his life. Dazzled by Fournet, Cresap agrees to help free her father. Although the veteran’s army days are behind him, his war is just starting to heat up… Praise for James M. Cain’s fiction “Cleverly plotted.” —The New York Times “Swift and absorbing.” —The Wall Street Journal
