Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

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The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Short stories depend on the effective employment of well-chosen details, the details that reveal a place, a character, or an era.

For O’Neil De Noux, those details often concern the city of New Orleans, which he once again masterly evokes in his latest John Raven Beau story, “Down on the Pontchartrain.” His depiction of the city is all the more poignant in this story, which occurs B.K. — before Hurricane Katrina wreaked its destruction. In the subsequent Conversation, Mr. De Noux talks a bit about his own connection to the Crescent City and the effect Katrina has had on his life.

Not all series are rooted in the same locale. Gilbert M. Stack selects just the right details to establish a new setting for each tale of his peripatetic trio: bare-knuckle boxer Corey Callaghan, his trainer Patrick o’sullivan, and the lady gambler Pandora Parson. In “Pandora’s Journey,” the confines of a train make for a tight, tense crime drama.

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