On a lazy spring evening in 1951, two cases arrive at Private Eye Lucien Caye’s office in the New Orleans Lower French Quarter. The first is a murder case already solved by the New Orleans Police Department. The client believes NOPD arrested the wrong man. Yeah. Right. The second case – find who wrote a song recorded by a now defunct record label eleven years ago here in New Orleans, a song that is now a hit. There are royalties.

It is slow, plodding work, sifting through slim leads of a murder case full of deception and misdirection as the song from the second case, How Could You Leave Me, haunts Lucien. When a young, alluring, doe-eyed woman with auburn hair steps into Lucien’s life, trouble soon follows – gunplay, murder, mayhem, lust, maybe even love as Lucien learns why the song’s original title was Hold Me, Babe.