Recommendation-The Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly

[Lydia Leftcoast]

These mysteries take place in the fascinating cultural melting pot of pre-Civil War New Orleans.

The main character is a free black man, known as Benjamin Janvier in the Creole community and as Benjamin January to the "Americans" who have come in since the Louisiana Purchase.

Born slaves, the children of an African-born man and a half-white woman, he and his sister Olympe are freed when their mother is bought and freed to be the mistress of a white man. Their mother later has a daughter by this white man, Dominique, who herself becomes a mistress or placée.

Benjamin is clearly intellectual brilliant so his mother's patron sends him to school in France, where becomes a doctor and remains happy and relieved of the institutional racism of Louisiana until the death of his first wife leaves him heartbroken and unable to bear staying in Paris. He returns to Louisiana and ekes out a living as a musician, since black people are not allowed to practice medicine.

This is where the first book, A Free Man of Color, begins.

Although the mysteries are well-written in themselves, the real fascination is old New Orleans, where French, Spanish, African, and Anglo cultures mix and clash in unpredictable ways. It's a city where the French and Spanish regard the Anglos as filthy barbarians, where every prominent man has two families, one with his legal wife and one with his black mistress, where black people may be slaves or free, where there are names for every admixture of every kind of ancestry, where some of the free blacks own slaves, even though they themselves are vulnerable to being kidnapped and sold into slavery up river, where French is more commonly spoken than English, a city with with suffocating heat and humidity in the days before air conditioning.

Anyway, I was reminded of this series because my current "purse book" is the latest entry, Dead and Buried.

[northoftheborder]

1. I call books that are short and absorbing, "travel or airport books".

With a good book, I can survive a two hour flight without misery. Also helps with long layovers. Thanks - I'll look those up. I'm planning a trip.

[catrose]

2. Kick. Rec. Etc.

wonderful series

[fadedrose]

3. Sounds good to me...R

[haele]

4. Hambly's a historian -

And her historical charactors have always been good studies into the contemporary attitudes of their times.
The plots may get a bit, well - fantastical? (after all, she started out in fantasy writing)- but the atmosphere, history, and the charactors are really what makes the stories, as well as her ability to take an unjudgemental view on many of the unpleasantness that can be part of human nature.
I always liked her books. Apparently, another one just came this year - "The Shirt on His Back". (on edit, it's on Amazon, though our local bookstores have so narrowed down the selection, her books are not regularly carried any more...it might be a publisher issue?)

If you're a newbie to the series, start from the first book; they build on each other.

Haele