A Surprising Novel

I would not have believed it if someone had told me that a white female writer of detective fiction had created a believable African American male character, especially in 19^th century New Orleans. Yet, that is exactly what Barbara Hambly has done in her first detective novel set in News Orleans in the 1830s. She gets into the very mind and soul of her black male character, Benjamin January. I learned about Hambly and the Benjamin January series through an article “A Free Man of Color: The Benjamin January Mysteries” by the very knowledgeable critic Jon L. Breen in the Mystery Scene magazine (issue No. 125; Summer 2012).

Hambly, a prolific novelist, has written novels in many genres—historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and romance fiction. She has three mystery novels in the Abigail Adams series, which she published under the pseudonym Barbara Hamilton. She began the first of eleven novels in the Benjamin January series in 1997 with A Free Man of Color (ISBN 0-553-10258-3).

In 1830, Benjamin January, all six feet, three inches of him, reluctantly returned home to New Orleans after living 16 years in Paris, France because, after his wife Ayasha died, he was lonely and depressed. In Paris, though he couldn’t practice his profession as a doctor and had to make his living as a piano player, he was free. He didn’t have to bow before every white person he met and didn’t have to hide his intelligence. Back in New Orleans, he was a freeman of color but steal had to put on the mask and not reveal his healing skills. He continued to make his living playing the piano at the many balls and the opera.

January and his full sister Olympe are the children of a mulatto mother and African father. When their father disappeared, their mother was sold to St. Denis Janvier, a Creole, and became his mistress, giving him a daughter, January’s half sister, Dominique. Janvier saw to it that Benjamin received an education in medicine and music. Although he is a free man, Benjamin can’t practice medicine because his skin is “cold black.” To earn money, he plays the piano at the balls and opera and gives lessons to young white children.

Benjamin’s trouble begins when he is the last person seen with the octoroon beauty Angelique Crozat who is later found dead in her dressing room where she was preparing to perform at the Blue Ribbon Ball. She makes a beautiful and expected corpse because she is “a thoroughly detestable woman…” Though Benjamin suspects the Creole gentleman who is courting her, trying to persuade her to become his mistress, is the murderer, he soon learns he is the main suspect and begins playing hide and seek with the authorities and the slave traders. He has to find the murderer of Angelique before the authorities or slave traders catch him. The authorities will mostly likely hang him. The slave traders certainly will sell him back into slavery. Benjamin’s predicament gives birth to his new profession: he becomes an amateur detective, and his first client is himself.

Reading A Free Man of Color is like taking a slow stroll through 1830s New Orleans. Hambly does an outstanding job describing the social milieu based on class, race, and nationality, and describing the balls, their purpose, and the type of women who attend them to catch a protector (Creole man whose mistress they will become). The wealth of detail paints an authentic picture of New Orleans society in the 1830s.

The great achievement of this exciting novel is the protagonist. Dark-skinned Benjamin January is a complex character who has to navigate three worlds: that of the slaves, that of free persons, and that of the whites (Creole and American). He has to carefully maneuver around the rules: one set for whites, one set for coloreds, and one set for blacks. He also has to deal with the uneasy relationship with his light-skinned mother, which reflects how skin color operates within the black families. Through it all, it becomes a good amateur detective.

A Few Random Thoughts

MERRY CHRISTMAS: 

Now that that traditional greeting is out of the way, I can get on with the post for this month. I had planned this month to post a critical review of the first novel in the Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series. I decided instead to review it in February 2013 and to review the other nine novels in the series in remaining nine months of 2013. The 10 novels feature Hambly’s believable 19^th century African American detective.

Why February? Well, I have to post my review of a novel that I read in November before embarking on my adventure through 1830s New Orleans with Benjamin January.

Every December, to give my brain a break, I relax from reading crime fiction by reading a so-called literary novels. I choose the novels at random. This year I plan to read two novels—Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Tumbling, a first novel by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. If I can find the time, I might read one of the novels I have on my Kindle or Nook. On the Kindle, I have current crime fiction, and on the Nook, I have crime novels from the 19^th century that I downloaded from the Gutenberg website. 

Well, that’s it for this short and sweet post.

The Truth is Hard

My favorite character is back in Charlotte Carter’s second novel featuring amateur detective, Cassandra. The twenty-year old college student I met in Jackson Park who made me want to slap the taste out of her mouth gets her grandaunt Ivy and Ivy’s husband Woody involved in another dangerous mystery-thriller in Trip Wire.  

A few months after solving the 20 year old murder of a White school teacher, Cassandra and her grandaunt Ivy and granduncle Woody investigate the murder of her best friend Wilton and his White girl friend Mia in a hippie commune where Cassandra lives with six other people. To prove she is independent and to annoy her aunt and uncle, she moved out of their home and into the commune, an apartment on Chicago’s north side. She met Wilton, the black member of the commune, in Lincoln Park during Bobby Seale’s appearance at the Democratic Convention in 1968.

In her usual impetus and annoying way, Cass can’t rest until she finds out who killed Milton and Mia. Like most 20-year-olds in the 1960s, she mistrusts  adults, especially, Ivy and Woody as well as the Chicago police, including her uncle’s detective friend Jack Klaus. During her investigation she discovers a Black militant organization called “The August 4 Committee” whose mission is to kill White Army officers they consider racists and who, they believe, murdered Black soldiers in Vietnam. She also learns about spies for the FBI and snitches for the Chicago police.

Carter deftly describes Chicago in late 1968 and by extension the entire nation as seen through the eyes of Cassandra.

My ROOM WAS GRAY AND MUSTY FROM CIGARETTE SMOKE. IT was long past sunrise, but light was hard to come by. The news is­suing from my clock radio was just as sunless and heavy-

Death toll for the week so far: 80. That was just "our" side. No figures on how many of the enemy incinerated. A Christmas truce was in the offing, and Bob Hope was on the way to Saigon.

Other headlines: Two children and their welfare mother as­phyxiated. Mix poor people with no heat and a faulty gas oven. Result, death. A drunk driver killed four teens on the highway.

In Cassandra, Carter has created the personality of an idealistic 20-year-old Black female rebelling against the system and having to learn to accept the truths she finds in the system. While talking about how drug dealers operate with Henry Waddell, the old gangster in Jackson Park, who has some past connection to Ivy and Woody, Cassandra realizes that she and Wilton had drifted apart:

Suddenly I realized how far away from Wilton I had traveled in just a few days. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing, accepting in a way I hadn't before, that he was dead and forever lost to me. But I don't think that was the whole answer. Accepting the death meant acknowledging how far away he had gone from me. What I was remarking on now was how far away I had gone from him. Curious that of all the friends and strangers I'd spoken to, it should be Henry Waddell who triggered this insight. 

Unlike her Greek namesake, it is not others who will not accept what she is saying, but Cassandra who must finally accept the truth of what she learns about herself and her grandaunt and granduncle.

If Charlotte Carter wrote another novel featuring Cassandra, I couldn’t find it on the Internet. So, if you know of another Cassandra novel, please let me know.

The Real Charlotte Carter Is Back

I felt Carter wasted her talent in the semi-pornographic novel Walking Bones. She redeems her self in Jackson Park, in which she returns to the detective novel. This time the amateur detective is not the New York street musician Nanette Hayes. She is a smart mouth, wonderfully irritating, intelligent twenty-year-old freshman college student in Chicago named Cassandra. She never knew her mother or father, and, when her grandmother with whom she was living died, went to live with her grandaunt and her husband in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Cassandra, Ivy, and Woody become amateur detectives when Clay Jackson from their old neighborhood asks Woody to find his missing granddaughter Lavelle Jackson. Lavelle disappeared during the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. She was last seen rushing out of the corner grocery store where she had gone to buy groceries for Clay. The owner found a high school ring among the groceries she dropped and, after some persuasion, gives it up to Woody. After reading the inscription on the inside of the ring, Woody decides to drop the case.

Cassandra, however, feels Mr. Clay deserves to know what happened to Lavelle and insists that Woody find her, or she will continue without his help. This naïve child doesn’t understand that Woody is reluctant to continue the search because it might lead to the family’s involvement in the investigation of the 20 year old murder of a white school teacher and conflict with members of the Chicago police department. She will also discover the involvement of some of her classmates in a black militant organization called “Root.”

Cassandra is an irritating, rebellious, intelligent 20 year old who, like most young people her age, thinks she knows everything, and yet, she is wonderfully fascinating. She describes herself: “I was ugly misshapen, red haired, and walked with a light limp.” She also considers herself 20 pounds overweight. She is the engine that keeps the rapidly moving plot rushing to an unexpected ending, especially for her.

Oh yes, Charlotte Carter, the real detective novelist, is back with a sort of coming-of-age detective novel. 

The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

Camacho’s first thriller, The Payback Assignment, disappointed me. He redeemed himself in his second thriller. Orion is packed with as the Electrifying Duo, Morgan Stark and Felicity O’Brien, battle a big, handsome, dangerous Irishman. Unlike the villain in The Payback Assignment, Ian Michael O’Ryan, who got the nick name Orion, after Orion, the great hunter in Greek mythology, while hunting big game in Africa, is bigger than life both physically and mentally.

Felicity’s Uncle Sean Sullivan, the priest of a small village in Ireland, comes to the U. S. to hire Morgan to help stop O’Ryan, whom he considers a terrorist, from recruiting the young men in the village. He believes O’Ryan wants to revive the IRA and restart ”the troubles” (religious wars). He doesn’t want O’Ryan killed, just stopped.

When the Electrifying Duo arrive in the village, Morgan, a Black man in Ireland, knows he’ll have to out drink and out fight the biggest dude in the pub to be accepted. He challenges and defeats Max Grogan in arm wrestling and drinking contests, thus becoming a hero to the patrons.

Once he is comfortable with the residents of the village, he and Felicity devise plans to stop O’Ryan. She devises the first of three plans. O’Ryan gets money he needs for his operation in Ireland from organizations that sponsor terrorism. She cleans out his bank accounts, which lack of ready cash puts him in a bind. Sorry, to explain how she does it would be a spoiler.

Morgan directs the operation to deprive O’Ryan of arms he has bought for a Middle Eastern terrorist. When the shipment arrives on the Irish coast, with the help a group of gypsies among whom Felicity lived after running away from home when she was 16, he makes sure the arms will not get to O’Ryan. O’Ryan must refund the customer’s money.

To get the money, he enters a motorcycle race in France, which he has never lost. Morgan enters the race under the Seagrave Industries sponsorship and riding one of their bikes. His objective is not to win but to make sure O’Ryan loses. Of course he knows O’Ryan will have his henchmen station along the course to take out any rider in the lead. A fact that spices up the scenes of the race.

O’Ryan doesn’t take Morgan’s interference very well. His men later ambush Morgan, who takes out three of them before they subdue him. O’Ryan holds Morgan on an island off the coast of southern France. Believing Morgan works for a government agency, he enjoys torturing him to try to get him to reveal which agency.

With her partner missing, Felicity goes into action. She doesn’t accept the possibility that he might be dead. he is too far away for her to sense his presence. But she is able from the direction in which the van fled to start out on the trial. She and Paul continue to the coast until she senses she is close, and learns about an isolate island. Once she is on the island and inside the house, she tangles with O’Ryan.

But it isn’t over. As Felicity is wheeling Morgan out of the hospital, they feel danger but too late to get back in the hospital. A man named Youssef and his henchmen stop them. The electrifying duo, Claudette, and Paul face their guns. Youssef was O’Ryan’s customer and now he blames Morgan for causing him to lose the weapons. Again, I can’t be a spoiler.

Camacho makes sure his readers are on the side of good when he has O’Ryan suggest that Morgan is no different from him—both are in a way mercenaries. However, Morgan considers what he does—helping other honest folks—as an honor. O’Ryan’s terrorist activities are about power. Orion is better than The Payback Assignment because it is better plotted and the villain is more worthy of the Electrifying Duo’s many talents.

The introduction of O’Ryan’s customer at the end disappointed me. It was a loose end that didn’t need wrapping up.

The Electrifying Duo

Morgan is a Black mercenary skilled in the martial arts and knowledgeable about all types of weapons. He is a walking arsenal. He carries his guns and knives in his jacket, belt, and boots. Like any expert, he believes that “A craftsman’s got to respect his tools.”

Felicity is a beautiful red-haired, green-eyed Irish international thief knowledgeable about jewelry, fine art, and security systems. She is a walking burglary tool kit, carrying her tools on her person and in her hair. She is “both a technician and an artist, the best at what she did….”

The electrifying duo becomes a team after a mean SOB named Adrian Seagrave double crosses both of them. Morgan is left stranded in the jungle after he assassinates a leader in Belize for Seagrave. All six men on his team of mercenaries are killed.

Three men kidnap Felicity as she is escaping from a house carrying a diamond brooch Seagrave hired her to steal. They relieve her of the brooch and leave her stranded in the Belize jungle. Morgan and Felicity team up to find and punish Seagrave.

In a coincident that works well for the plot, Morgan, driving the jeep he used to escape from the Belize police, happens upon Felicity, and rescues her from a long walk home to Los Angeles.

The relationship between the Irish beauty and the Black mercenary makes this bland novel worth reading. The psychic connection between them is not the kind that allows them to talk to each other without speaking. Morgan is good at accurately estimating distances. Felicity has an accurate sense of time. The real connection is their physic ability to sense danger and to sense when one or the other is in danger. This ability seriously interfere with their becoming lovers.

The Payback Assignment is not one of Camacho’s best. It succeeds in making the two main characters interesting but the plot is run of the mill; they spend the entire novel escaping from traps Seagrave’s thugs lay for them. Criminals versus criminals is good plot situation but incidents have to vary. The hero and heroine escaping trap after trap becomes too repetitious. There are no surprises and no twists.