O’Neil De Noux: The Northshore’s Literary Gumshoe
by Christina Rukavina
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” quipped Oscar Wilde. But then, the 19th century playwright never met O’Neil De Noux. When the seasoned gumshoe and recent northshore transplant isn’t catching criminals in real life, he captures them on the page in award-winning detective mysteries.
De Noux, who was born on State Street in New Orleans less than 100 yards from the Mississippi River, grew up hearing real-life “cops and robbers” stories from his father. As a criminal investigator for the Army, De Noux Sr. moved his family from the plains of Oklahoma and Kansas to those of Italy before retiring and resettling in the New Orleans area. De Noux Sr. subsequently commanded the Crime Scene Division of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, while the younger De Noux was in high school in Metairie. At that time, O’Neil’s literary tastes had expanded from Marvel Comics to science fiction authors such as H.G. Wells, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. They inspired him to take a stab during the next several years at what he terms “twenty of the worst science fiction stories ever written.” (Later, he’d be thrilled to have a short story published in the same issue of “Hemispheres,” the in-flight magazine of United Airlines, that also featured one penned by none other than Bradbury!)
With a father, three cousins and a brother all in law enforcement, it seemed pre-destined for De Noux to follow suit. Upon his high school graduation in 1968, he joined the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office as a police cadet, while concurrently studying criminology at Loyola University through the Law Enforcement Education Project. “They wanted cops to get college degrees,” De Noux recalls, explaining that his schooling was paid for in exchange for at least two years of police service afterwards.
De Noux’s education was interrupted when the Army drafted him at the height of the Vietnam War. Once again, he was following in the footsteps of his father, who—having already served in World War II and Korea—had volunteered for combat in Vietnam six years previously and earned three Purple Heart medals. (A bulletproof vest precluded bloodshed and a fourth medal from his last attack.) The younger De Noux, however, never made it to Vietnam because of a reduction in forces.
While stationed in California and Alabama, his military operation specialty was still photographer. Given that his company commander never knew who De Noux was until the time of his honorable discharge, this earned him about as much fame as he had achieved at Metairie’s Archbishop Rummel High School, where he was dubbed “senior most likely to remain anonymous.” Nevertheless, his time in the service enabled him to develop a creative skill that would later garner him awards and provide artwork for several of his books.
After his stint in the service, De Noux used the GI Bill to complete a degree in history at Troy University in Alabama. He was still lapping up science fiction novels, including those of Harlan Ellison and George Effinger, who would become major influences on De Noux’s writing. Meanwhile, he continued spinning his own bad versions of science fiction. His eyes were opened to a different genre, however, when he read Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” for the first time. “It’s absolutely my favorite detective novel,” he says.
Having returned to the New Orleans area, De Noux, like his father before, signed on with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s office. After his promotion from patrolman to homicide detective in the organized crime unit, De Noux solved every murder where he was lead investigator. Although this resulted in his being named Homicide Detective of the Year in 1981, being a great cop wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to create a fictitious version of a great cop. This was where art and life began to merge for De Noux. Although he’d been taking creative writing courses at area colleges without deriving much stimulation—including a master’s program “that taught us being published didn’t matter”—he had unwittingly been accumulating plenty of grist for his writing from his own occupational experience.
His success in writing didn’t happen overnight. Sometime at the beginning of his police career, De Noux began fashioning his trademark character, a Vietnam vet/New Orleans patrolman, whose father and brother were both cops—sound familiar? With a nod to both of his parents, De Noux named his protagonist Dino LaStanza, combining his father’s nickname with his mother’s Sicilian-American lineage. The original manuscript, an overblown short story, didn’t fare too well with editors, although they did like the realism of De Noux’s dialogue and his use of setting.
Almost symbiotically, however, as De Noux’s police career took off and he accumulated commendations for his work as a homicide detective, so LaStanza also improved, in both stature and quality. Shifting out of his job at the sheriff’s office, which often demanded double shifts, De Noux worked as a private investigator for three firms over the next six years. This gave him time to develop LaStanza, whom he “promoted” to an NOPD homicide detective—the only one with a perfect solution record, to boot. This time it worked. De Noux’s debut novel, “Grim Reaper,” starring the indefatigable LaStanza, was immediately purchased by Zebra Books.
The publication of that book in 1988 led to De Noux’s meeting George Effinger, whom he ranks as one of the world’s top science fiction writers. Effinger had adopted New Orleans as his hometown. After hearing De Noux speak at a local writers’ group, Effinger befriended him, taught him how to write short stories and introduced him to another legendary writer of science fiction, Harlan Ellison. Ellison, who wrote the screenplay for Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot,” remains a strong mentor for De Noux to this day. (Despite his literary accomplishments, Effinger was bankrupt when he died in 1997.)
Four more critically acclaimed LaStanza novels followed between 1990 and 1998, partly as a function of encouragement from Ellison, who called LaStanza “the detective of the downtrodden.” In between crafting further adventures for LaStanza, De Noux further flexed his writing muscles with a true-crime tale of a police investigation of a shocking Louisiana murder case. “Specific Intent” became his biggest seller and was a main selection of the Doubleday Book Club.
De Noux became most prolific in short-story writing, which, in addition to making him a well-published author, changed his life in other ways. With the acceptance of one of his stories in 1991, Pulphouse Publishing also offered him a job. That took him out of law enforcement—he’d been with the St. Bernard Sheriff’s Office for two years after his private eye career—and brought him to Eugene, Oregon. There he trained as an editor and, more importantly, met Debra Gray, a publisher at the firm. Although they’ve collaborated on numerous short stories since then, their most important partnership was their marriage in 1992.
Returning with his bride to the New Orleans area that same year, De Noux began an impressive 13-year teaching career, conducting classes in creative, short story, mystery and science fiction writing at Tulane University, UNO and Delgado Community College. He also worked as an editor, desktop publisher and computer graphic designer.
De Noux remained committed to short story writing. By 2000, he had sold nearly 200 short stories, encompassing every genre, including the children’s market in such magazines as Cricket and Turtle. During this time, his alter ego showed up again in one of his five short-story collections, “LaStanza: New Orleans Police Stories.” It’s a compilation of tales inspired by real-life events—sometimes deeply personal, such as the cathartic “Airline Highway.” The story is based on both his father’s handling of an airplane crash at New Orleans International Airport in 1966 and De Noux’s own role in investigating the 1982 crash of a Pan American 727 in Kenner. That harrowing experience has kept him from going near a plane ever since. A couple of brutal police tales are largely autobiographical, while another allows LaStanza to tackle an unresolved case De Noux’s father had brooded over for years. The collection merited De Noux an “A” book review rating from Entertainment Weekly magazine in 1999.
Indeed, all was going well until Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, causing severe damage to De Noux’s southshore home. “Being a cop, I’ve seen the worst in humankind. Then again, I’ve met the best,” De Noux states, recounting how he and his wife were taken in by Anne and Dr. Lee J. Monlezun, “two of the most generous people I’ve ever met, people we didn’t know before Katrina.” Patrons of the arts, the Monlezuns let De Noux and his wife have a house in Lake Charles rent-free for 11 months until his house in Kenner could be repaired and sold.
During that time, De Noux found solace in his work. In 2006, he taught mystery writing at McNeese University. In March of that year, his collection of 1940s private eye stories, “New Orleans Confidential,” received kudos from, among others, Publishers Weekly, which termed it “an engaging, fast-paced collection of stories … the author knows his stuff when it comes to the Big Easy.” Moreover, his short story, “The Heart Has Reasons,” which appeared as the cover story of the September 2006 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, garnered him the 2007 Shamus Award for Best Short Story from the Private Eye Writers of America. “I’m quite proud of that,” De Noux says, explaining that the Hitchcock magazine is a top market for magazine mystery writing—and he was selected for the award by his peers.
Nearly a year to the day after the hurricane, De Noux and his wife bought a home in Covington. They are delighted with their new location. “We love the feeling of living in the country with all the trees and the small-town appeal of downtown Covington, in particular. Everything looks and feels cleaner, and the people are so much more concerned about each other and considerate.” De Noux continues, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a New Orleanian at heart and often go to the city, but that’s the nice thing. I can go, but I don’t have to live there.”
Which detective-story writer does he think portrays New Orleans best? De Noux’s favorites are “The Asylum,” a PI novel by his friend, New Orleans writer John Edward Ames, and “The Killing Circle,” by another local writer, Chris Wiltz. If he had to pick just one writer to emulate, he’d choose New Orleans-born Elmore (“Get Shorty”) Leonard. “He’s what all mystery writers try to be like.”
He adds, “I’m not personally a big fan of stories about amateur detectives. I hate cats and dogs solving murders. I’ve got a cat that can’t find her dish, much less solve a mystery. I’d much rather read about someone who’s a professional.”
While De Noux appreciates that there’s “less rushing around” in St. Tammany Parish, his newest job as police investigator with Southeastern Louisiana University’s Police Department provides him the excitement he needs and the real-life inspiration he thrives on. After all, he notes, “The mean streets aren’t so different.” Fully commissioned by the state, the campus headquarters operate every bit like any professional police department. As such, the officers not only tend to violations on school grounds, but may pursue crime off campus as well.
Having always had a day job, De Noux has learned to make time for his writing, which he does early in the morning, late at night and on weekends. He comes up with a germ of an idea, and goes through a period of determining how to express his character, exercising some “conscious meditation.” He makes an outline of up to twelve pages, figures out who to put in the story and goes back to lay out the scenes. He doesn’t aim for a number of words or pages per day, but he does have a rule about not talking about what he’s writing, because that “takes away from it.”
To aspiring authors, he says, “Write what moves you, what makes you feel like writing.” What has made De Noux feel like writing most recently is a foray into the increasingly popular genre of the adult graphic (illustrated) novel, which seems fitting, given his youthful affinity for comic book characters. He’s just completed two such novels, one about a superhero and the other a gritty crime story set in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, which his agent has sent to several publishers. Stay tuned for more tales from this storytelling police officer whose work is … positively criminal!
