Graveyard dust is “a curse to the death”
No series of novels set in New Orleans
would be complete without one about voodoo. Although voodoo is present in
Barbara Hambly’s two previous Benjamin January novels, it is the explicit motif
in the third novel in the series. In Graveyard Dust, the amateur detective’s
Catholic faith is tested when someone tries to put a hoodoo spell on him.
Benjamin’s sister Olympe is arrested and
charged with murder. She is accused of furnishing the poison a young wife
allegedly used to kill her husband. Benjamin and those trying to help Olympe,
including the voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, realize that the odds are against her.
In the culture of the time, she is considered guilty because she is a
voodooienne known among the voodoos as Olympia Snakebones. Benjamin also
worries about Olympe’s health in the dirty, disease ridden jail because, though
the authorities try to keep it quiet, Bronze John, as the yellow fever is
called, is haunting the jail.
From Benjamin’s perspective: “Isaak Jumon
was dead. Celie Jumon had bought something from Olympe, poisoner and
voodooienne. That might be all the jury would hear.” He must find the real
killer before the trial or Olympe is doomed.
Once he is on the trail of the real killer,
danger comes at Benjamin from two sources, creating the tension that kept me
reading. First is a physical threat from a paid assassin, a mountain man named
Killdevil Ned, that causes Benjamin to constantly look over his shoulder as he
traverses the rough and swampy areas of New Orleans. Killdevil is dangerous but
not as threatening psychologically.
Benjamin fears most the psychologically threat
because it plays on his mind. It comes from Mambo Oba, a voodooienne who makes
evil jujus. When Benjamin finds a chicken foot under his mattress and graveyard
dust on the floor in his room, he panics. He is a Catholic but all his life he
has been around voodoo and is often ambivalent when confronted by the practice
of voodoos, sometimes he fears it, and other times he doesn’t know what to
think. He tells himself that voodoo isn’t real, that is superstition. But, true
to his Catholic faith, he refuses Marie Laveau’s help because he doesn’t
believe the gris-gris she gives him will protect him from the juju he found in his room. God is his
protector. For
God would keep him safe. In times past he’d worn a gris-gris Olympe had
made for him and had prayed, half in jest, to Papa Legba as he’d now and them
addressed the classical gods, like Athene or Apollo. But lately he’d put the
gris-gris away, unsure what it meant to wear such a thing. To seek the help of
the loa was, at beast, an act of
mistrust in the goodness of the power of God.
And yet, he fears the voodoo demons.
...January had dreamed...of the demon Omulu, and of the red eyes
watching him from within a sheep skull clotted with dry blood and ants. Waking,
he had had to fight the desperate urge to tear mattress and pillows and bedding
to pieces lest there be feathers in them twisted into the shape of a rooster or
a cat. Lying in the darkness he had tried to think of all the places in the
room where balls of black wax and graveyard dust might be secreted.
When he needs him the most, the boss voodoo
god, Papa Legba, helps Benjamin as he chases a bad guy through the swamps.
Hambly renders the scene so skillfully, that I wasn’t sure if Benjamin was
communicating with Papa in reality or a hallucination.
In Graveyard dust Hambly continues the
high quality of her storytelling through her skillful blend of plot and
character. She makes the supernatural seem a part of the natural order of
things. Most of all, the war between Christianity and voodoo going on in Benjamin’s
mind provides more insight into his personality, revealing the complexity of
his character. Rose, the free woman of color that Benjamin showed great
affection for in Fever Season reappears. Will the two of them ever get together?
