The Ragin Cajun

Big Johnson is back, and the stakes have never been higher.


It was a cool April evening on the Mississippi, and I was fighting a losing battle at the poker table on the Ragin Cajun—a floating casino churning its way up the river. Down five large and surrounded by a table of questionable characters—from my flashy associate Pimpin Jack Frost to a silent, tattooed ex-con named Pig—I was looking for a way to come up off my losing streak.


Frost was dressed in a red, one-piece jumpsuit, with a low vee-neck front revealing a host of gold chains. He wore matching red pimp shoes, a white fur coat draped stylishly over his shoulders, with a matching white fur fedora cocked ace-duce.


Me, I was wearing a white, with blue pinstriped seersucker suit that was nice and cool. I wore a white Panama hat on my head cocked in a rakish manner. My dress shirt was pale blue, and I was sporten a blood red bowtie. I was dressed sharper than a Harlem sissy.


I looked up from the table and saw Madam Dubré hurrying over. She leaned in and spoke softly in my ear: “I’m missing one of my girls and we can’t find her anywhere.”


How does a girl just disappear on a traveling riverboat? Knowing my skill in locating lost souls Madam Dubré hires me to begin a dangerous new adventure on the mean streets of New Orleans. Welcome to my world.


"A masterclass in noir. Ralph Griffith delivers a high-stakes, sweat-drenched ride through the dark waters of the Mississippi that you won't be able to put down."


“Big Johnson is the most compelling investigator to hit the mean streets of New Orleans in years. Sharp, gritty, and unapologetically bold—The Ragin Cajun is a must-read."


"Style, suspense, and a voice that hits like a freight train. Griffith captures the humid, dangerous pulse of the Big Easy perfectly."