A 1948 Murder Mystery Transformed My New Orleans Trip

One of the vital vital objects on my packing checklist is an efficient e book—a particular sort of good e book. Each time I’m going on a visit, I be certain that to discover a work of fiction set in my vacation spot. Sometimes I’ll decide one up earlier than I depart, however at different instances I’ll ask for a advice at a neighborhood bookstore after I arrive. The tip result’s all the time the identical: I really feel as if I’ve stepped contained in the story.

Studying fiction set within the place you’re touring to is a surefire approach for 2 unbelievable issues to occur. You get an particularly immersive studying expertise, and your journey is enriched by what you’ve realized whereas studying. Perhaps you’ll acknowledge a neighborhood landmark that simply appeared in your e book—otherwise you would possibly impress your fellow vacationers by understanding in regards to the historical past of a specific neighborhood. It is all a part of the enjoyable.

On a current trip to Lisbon, Portugal, I introduced a duplicate of Chris Pavone’s Two Nights in Lisbon with me. It is a thriller a couple of lady’s husband being kidnapped within the coronary heart of the town. (Admittedly, this was not probably the most stress-free alternative for a solo journey.) The principle character stays in a lodge near Praça do Comércio, very like I did. For one more journey, I appeared ahead to visiting Judy Blume’s Books & Books retailer on Key West. After I requested for a advice for historic fiction there, a bookseller pointed me within the path of Chanel Cleeton’s The Final Prepare to Key West, which transported me to 1935, when Henry Flagler’s Abroad Railroad was pummeled by a devastating hurricane. Flagler additionally constructed Key West’s Casa Marina, the historic lodge the place I’d been staying.

My autumn journey to New Orleans, nevertheless, topped all of my literary journey experiences, because of Frances Parkinson Keyes’ Dinner at Antoine’s, a 1948 thriller novel partially set inside the town’s landmark French-Creole restaurant. Now out-of-print, the e book, a bestseller in its day, follows a bunch of dinner company looking for solutions after considered one of them—an unhappily married magnificence!—dies. I learn half of the e book earlier than my journey and deliberate to learn the second half there; I wanted to see how the Antoine’s in my head in comparison with the actual factor. Plus, I wished to stroll out with a vivid setting for the remainder of my studying expertise.

On a weeknight in October, I saddled as much as the bar at Antoine’s within the French Quarter, able to expertise Forties New Orleans. I ordered a Sazerac and Oysters Rockefeller, a dish invented there, and chatted with the bartender in regards to the e book I used to be having fun with a lot. He invited me to discover the restaurant’s personal rooms and talked about that considered one of them had an unique copy of Dinner at Antoine’s on show. Moments after I paid my tab, I joined an unofficial tour a waiter was giving to a small group of holiday makers. The maze-like sequence of greater than a dozen personal eating rooms was dripping in regal glamor; I ogled glimmering chandeliers, gilded molding, and rows upon rows of vintage portraits, to not point out a protracted, slender wine cellar and the well-known e book encased in glass.

I took a detour to marvel at—and linger in—the crimson-red 1840 Room, the place the titular dinner takes place. I might simply image the characters seated on the desk, donning their night robes and tuxedos. On the time, I hadn’t guessed the offender but, however getting into the story on this approach virtually made me really feel like a detective. My case, it seems, was not the homicide thriller I’d been studying, however the Creole customs, meals, and traditions of New Orleans’ tradition. My immersion right into a ‘40s model of the French Quarter underscored a a lot richer appreciation for the place I used to be visiting. Ultimately, I did ultimately guess the assassin appropriately—and I’d prefer to assume my very own dinner at Antoine’s was to thank for it.