New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation. New Orleans Noir is a sparkling collection of tales exploring the city's wasted, gutted neighbourhoods, its outwardly gleaming sliver by the river', its still raunchy French Quarter and other hoods so far from the Quarter they might as well be on another continent. It also looks back into the past, from that recent innocent time known as 'pre-K' to the mid-19th century, the other time the city was mostly swampland.'