Ready to Hang: Seven Famous New Orleans Murders - Paperback

by Robert Tallant (Author)

The Crescent City's dark past is as glamorous as ever. New Orleans has never been a city void of drama, from revelers on Bourbon Street to grisly murders. Seven of the most renowned murders of the early twentieth century are collected in this book by novelist Robert Tallant. In these stories, all of which are remarkably researched, the thrilling details jump off the page. From Kate Townsend, who was found in her brothel bed, to dead children sleeping beside hypnotists, these chilling tales will keep readers enthralled.

Back Jacket

Robert Tallant says that "New Orleans need never apologize for its murder history." From that elegant brothel on Basin Street, where fat Kate Townsend's body was found on her lace-hung bed, with a basket of flowers suspended from the tester, to the shuttered filthy room where the hypnotist Dr. Deschamps lay with a dead child beside him, the murder history of New Orleans has been a dramatic one.

Robert Tallant has worked from contemporary records and his stories are authentic, making for fascinating reading. The reader watches the dread Mafia in action; sees proper Miss Annie Crawford playing her favorite role, respectable killer; and learns about the omnipresent (or so it seemed) Axman, all set in the glamorous, mysterious, and beautiful city of New Orleans.

Tallant was a novelist who made his characters and scenes move from the pages; a man who knew the city he was writing about, knew it and loved it. Tallant was born in New Orleans on April 9, 1909, and lived there all of his life. He wrote short stories, articles, nonfiction books, novels, and books for children. Among them are Evangeline and the Acadians; Mardi Gras . . . As It Was; The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans, which won the 1951 Louisiana Library Association Award for best book of the year; Voodoo in New Orleans; The Voodoo Queen; and Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folk Tales of Louisiana, of which he was a co-author. They are all published by Pelican.

Author Biography

Robert Tallant was one of Louisiana's best-known authors. Born in New Orleans in 1909, he attended the city's local public schools. Before "drifting" into writing, Tallant worked as an advertising copywriter, a bank teller, and a clerk. It was his friendship with Lyle Saxon that led Tallant to his position as editor on the Louisiana WPA Writers' Project during the 1930s and 1940s. In that position, he coauthored Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folk Tales of Louisiana with Lyle Saxon and Edward Dreyer.

By 1948, Tallant's career had launched, and over the next eleven years he produced eight novels, six full-length works of nonfiction, and numerous short stories and articles on subjects of local interest. He is also known to have corresponded with, as well as applied to, the Julius Rosenwald Fund for a fellowship in creative writing. During the last years of his life, he was a lecturer in English at Newcomb College as well as a reporter for the New Orleans Item. Robert Tallant died in 1957.