![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reading: A Free Man of Color
Jan. 21st, 2018 11:24 amI read some of Barbara Hambly's fantasy novels when I was in my teens, and rather enjoyed them (mostly because they featured sensible, competent female characters), but I hadn't really thought of her in decades until someone mentioned her Benjamin January series of historical mysteries set in New Orleans in the 1830s, and I thought they sounded worth a try.
Benjamin January is a 'free man of color', a member of New Orleans's large population of free mixed-race people in the 1830s; a legacy of the city's French and Spanish history and the Creole habit of freeing the children of white owners and black slaves which is contrasted with the attitude of the city's growing American population, who automatically assume that any non-white person must be a slave. Returned to his native city after sixteen years in Paris, where a black man might be looked down on but was still seen as a man, the novel opens with January struggling to readapt to life in a society where he has to carry papers at all times proving his right to be seen as a person rather than a thing, and where he has increasingly little legal recourse should any white person decide to ignore that right. Trained as a surgeon but unable to practice in New Orleans, January instead makes a living playing and teaching the piano, and becomes entangled in his first case when a woman is murdered at a ball where he is playing. As the last person known to have seen her alive, January falls under suspicion, and is forced to begin his own investigation in order to clear his name.
The mystery plot is solid and I liked the historical detail, which doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truths of the time. January is a good choice as point-of-view character, his culture shock and experience in Europe making him easier for modern readers to identify with than a character who automatically accepted the rigid racial stratification of New Orleans society would be, but I also liked the supporting characters: his snobbish, gossipy mother; his sisters, the beautiful but kind and generous Dominique and the voodoo practitioner Olympe; and the police lieutenant Abishag Shaw, a white American who isn't quite the redneck he at first appears to be. There's some repetition in the narrative which made me think it could perhaps have done with a bit more editing, but on the whole I enjoyed it, and I will certainly read the second in the series sometime.
Benjamin January is a 'free man of color', a member of New Orleans's large population of free mixed-race people in the 1830s; a legacy of the city's French and Spanish history and the Creole habit of freeing the children of white owners and black slaves which is contrasted with the attitude of the city's growing American population, who automatically assume that any non-white person must be a slave. Returned to his native city after sixteen years in Paris, where a black man might be looked down on but was still seen as a man, the novel opens with January struggling to readapt to life in a society where he has to carry papers at all times proving his right to be seen as a person rather than a thing, and where he has increasingly little legal recourse should any white person decide to ignore that right. Trained as a surgeon but unable to practice in New Orleans, January instead makes a living playing and teaching the piano, and becomes entangled in his first case when a woman is murdered at a ball where he is playing. As the last person known to have seen her alive, January falls under suspicion, and is forced to begin his own investigation in order to clear his name.
The mystery plot is solid and I liked the historical detail, which doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truths of the time. January is a good choice as point-of-view character, his culture shock and experience in Europe making him easier for modern readers to identify with than a character who automatically accepted the rigid racial stratification of New Orleans society would be, but I also liked the supporting characters: his snobbish, gossipy mother; his sisters, the beautiful but kind and generous Dominique and the voodoo practitioner Olympe; and the police lieutenant Abishag Shaw, a white American who isn't quite the redneck he at first appears to be. There's some repetition in the narrative which made me think it could perhaps have done with a bit more editing, but on the whole I enjoyed it, and I will certainly read the second in the series sometime.
