City of Secrets — O'Neil De Noux

Two months after Hurricane Katrina the New Orleans Police Department is as devastated as the city â€" police stations destroyed, mass desertions of officers, no reliable communications, a fraction of the force struggling to hold it all together. The slow process of rebuilding brings an influx of honest workers along with criminals eager to fill the void left when most of the thugs evacuated the city. The Brown Ravens, a multiracial, super-violent crew of drug dealers sets up in the half-deserted city. To solidify their turf, they begin to litter the streets with murder victims. Organized crime has a distinct advantage against disorganized law enforcement. As gunshots break the silence of Halloween night, a detective responds, discovers the body of a young woman marked with a Brown Raven emblem. It's a message, the deadly gang telling everyone this is their territory. Wrong. The detective standing next to the body is different. He is used to working alone, used to tracking killers, used to taking the law into his own hands. Thus begins a long, bloody struggle between a gang of sociopathic murderers and a homicide detective called John Raven Beau, half-Cajun, half-Sioux, a cunning, fearless man who is ruthless when needed, a cop who hunts killers with methodical, calculating precision. Beau will bring the killers to justice. In handcuffs or in a body bag. With the blood of warrior ancestors surging through his veins, Beau will relentlessly pursue the murderers until it is over, one way or the other. from the mind of John Raven Beau â€" This isn't a story about Hurricane Katrina, although it takes place shortly after. It isn't a story about New Orleans, although that's the city with the secrets. It's not even about law and order, crime and punishment, although there's a lot of punishment dealt out by me, because that's what this story is about. Me. John Raven Beau. I used to think a homicide detective in New Orleans was like a trooper with Custer at the Little Big Horn. It's being half Sioux, I guess. But in the fall of 2005, it is more like being a Spartan at Thermopylae. Only there aren't three hundred of us working together. It's just one. Me. If you think I'm exaggerating, read the damn story. I have no excuse for what I did. Killing a man is never pleasant. The blood of my ancestors, the great Lakota tribe, whose ferocity brought our tribe to dominate the great plains before the coming of the white man, rises in my veins and directs me on a warpath. No other way to put it. All cities have secrets. Some have men like me.