The Frontier Adventure

In Days of the Dead, the 7^th novel in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series, the amateur detective and his wife ventured into Mexico to rescue their friend and Benjamin’s fellow musician Hannibal Sefton. Since that trip, Benjamin has solved crimes and dodged danger back in his hometown of New Orleans. However, in June 1837, he loses the remainder of the money he had in the Bank of Louisiana when it closes. Since many wealthy citizens of New Orleans also lost money due to the bank failure, Benjamin can no longer find work giving piano lessons to their children or playing the piano for the many balls and operas. Rose’s school also has to close. The loss of income forces him to venture again away from the familiar but perilous streets of New Orleans.

  

In The Shirt on His Back, the tenth novel in the series, the adventurous amateur detective takes a job helping his friend Lieutenant Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans Guards find the man who killed Shaw’s younger brother Johnny. Into the Oregon Territory go Benjamin, Shaw, and their friend Hannibal. Benjamin carries a notebook to record his observations of the Indians and the flora and fauna for his scientific-minded wife Rose, who can’t accompany him as usual because she is pregnant with their first child.

When the trio reaches Fort Ivy, Shaw’s older brother Tom, the headman, tells him that Johnny was found scalped, but he doesn’t think Indians killed him. He suspects Frank Boden, the former clerk, killed Johnny because he saw the partially contents of a letter containing the name “Hepplewhite” on Boden’s desk. The letter appeared to suggest that Boden wasn’t who he claimed to be and might be up to something nefarious. Tom tells them Boden left a few days ago and might be hiding among the trappers at the rendezvous. The three men set out for the rendezvous where the trappers gather each year to sell their beaver furs to the American Fur Company or the Hudson Bay Company.

The plot involves more than the hunt for Johnny’s killer. Benjamin eventually finds himself having to solve the murder of an old man from Germany and the poisoning of several trappers. When the three man hunters along with Johnny’s killer and his Indian accomplices are captured by Blackfeet, Benjamin has to use his detective skills to prevent the Chief from ordering their deaths by exposing the killer of the old man and the trappers and convincing the chief that he and Shaw must take the killer or killers back to face white man’s justice.

On the frontier, except for one man who shows his prejudice against black folks, Benjamin is treated as an equal once he proves he can shoot and fight and bravely face danger from hostile Indians, bears, and the weather as well as any mountain man.

The narrative voice in The Shirt On His Back, as in Hambly’s other novels in the series, is Benjamin January’s, but the story belongs to Lieutenant Abishag Shaw, a Kentucky mountain man who left the family feuds in his home state and settled in New Orleans. He is one of the most interesting characters in the series and Benjamin’s friend. This lanky Kentucky mountain man is almost as tall as Benjamin, wears dirty clothes, has scraggly hair, and chews tobacco. Since he became a lawman, he rejects the blood feuds of his home state. Thus, wrestling with his conscious, he has to decide whether to kill Johnny’s murderer or bring him in for trial.

As authors in other novels have done, Hambly romanticized the mountain men. Also, she sees the Indians as victims, though she does try to make them more complex—some are villains who are enticed into villainy by white men and a desire for vengeance, and are some good guys. Using Benjamin’s perspective, Hambly does a bit of preaching on a familiar subject, the people responsible for the disappearance of the wilderness:

…the Americans  came . . . Americans wanting beaver skins to sell for hats so they could make money. Americans wanting slaves brought in from Africa so they could grow cotton to sell to make money. Americans wanting land that the Sioux and Shoshone and Cherokee had since time immemorial lived on as hunters and as farmers . . . not so that they could farm themselves, but so they could sell it to other whites for farms, so that they—the sellers—could make money.

If you like tales about the American frontier, you’ll enjoy The Shirt On His Back, a detective-adventure story of detection, murder, and narrow escapes frontier style.

The Wrong Body

I apologize for misnumbering some of the previous novels. Dead Water is the eighth not the ninth novel in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series.

In Dead and Buried, the ninth novel in the series, Hambly inserts a disclaimer of sorts at the end of the book: “It is not the purpose of this novel to explore the origins and ramifications—political, social, and psychological—of race-based chattel slavery in the United States, nor the entangled and tragic system of prejudice and laws that made up the one-drop rule….” Though she doesn’t explore the origins of the rule, she certainly explores the social ramifications it had on individuals and families, and, as a good storyteller should, does so in an entertaining way. To say more about the theme of Dead and Buried might spoil your enjoyment, so I will not discuss the theme, except to say that Hambly handles it very well.

The attendants at the funeral of Rameses Ramilles, a fellow musician of Benjamin January’s, are horrified when the pall bearers drop the coffin and out falls the body of a white man. Hannibal Sefton, another fellow musician, recognizes the dead man as Patrick Derryhick, a friend from his youthful, carefree days in England.

Benjamin helps arrange a party to search for Ramilles’s body because the police will not search the swamp for "A black man's corpse, particularly after a week or two in the river….” Seeing how the body of his friend upset Hannibal and wanting to know how Ramilles’s body was removed from the coffin and replaced with Derryhick’s body, Benjamin, with approval of police investigator Lieutenant Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans City Guards, helps with the investigation.  

It doesn’t take long for them to learn that Derryhick was with a party of Englishmen who came to New Orleans so the youngest, Germinus Stuart, the 12^th Viscount Foxford, could pursue the French Creole beauty, Isobel Deschamps, whom he had met in Paris. The other two members of the party are his uncle Diogenes and the business manager of the Stuart estate, Caius Droudge.

The plot turns on the romance between the young lovers, Isobel and Germinus, and involves labyrinthine family secrets of both. They met in Paris while Isobel was visiting relatives and Germinus was vacationing. Something happened that caused Isobel to flee Paris and return to New Orleans. Soon after her return, she leaves the city for Natchitoches Parish.

After items belonging to Derryhick are found in his hotel room, Germinus is arrested and charged with the murder. He refuses to admit he knows Isobel and to say where he was when Derryhick was killed. For Benjamin, the answer to Germinus’s silence lies upriver in Natchitoches Parish, in the St. John Chapel in Cloutieville. So, once again we follow him into danger of being captured and sold into slavery as he travels without either of his safety valves, Hannibal or Shaw. He is sure that what he finds will also provide the motive for the murder of Derryhick, which will lead to the murderer.

In the subplot, Benjamin suspects Martin Quennell, brother of the funeral direct, of embezzling money from the Faurbourg Treme Free Colored Militia and Burial Society of which Benjamin is a board member and Martin the bookkeeper. Martin also may have information about a quarrel between Derryhick and another man before Derryhick was murdered. But before Hannibal can get the information out of him, Martin is killed.

No Benjamin January novel would be complete without Ben’s Catholic belief coming up against his skepticism. He often relies on folk characters to ease his fears. So it is with "Compair Lapin" or Brer Rabbit, the trickster whom he calls upon when he wants to escape danger from white planters or thugs.

Hambly hits two discordant notes in this otherwise neatly plotted mystery. In the funeral scene, Hambly tells us nothing about Pere Eugenius, the only other white man present, and doesn’t mention him again.

The ingenious method the villain uses to replace Ramilles’s body with Derryhick’s stretches plausibility but the novel is still exciting.

To readers who follow my blog: thank you.

River Adventure

Traveling up the Mississippi River on a steamboat in the 19^th century was a dangerous journey. The danger came not only from debris floating in the river and sand bars but also from outlaws prowling the river bank looking for the opportunity to attack. For runaway slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad and free Blacks it was even more dangerous because the runaways would be returned to their masters if caught and the free would be captured and sold into slavery. In Dead Water, the ninth novel in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series, Benjamin, his wife Rose, and their friend Hannibal Sefton face the dangers of river travel when they take on a case of robbery and murder.

  

Hubert Granville, president of the Bank of Louisiana, hires the dynamic trio, Benjamin, Rose, and Hannibal, to recovery four million dollars the bank manager, Oliver Weems, stole from the bank. For Ben and Rose, who naturally will accompanied him, it means going into the cotton country upriver--Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri—and the danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Since Benjamin and Rose deposited their money in the bank, Ben accepts the job provided that Granville will pay him $500 and agree to buy back him and Rose if they fall into the clutches of slave traders. As a second safe guard against such an eventuality, Hannibal travels with them disguised as their master.

The three travel upriver toward Memphis on the steamboat “Silver Moon.” Also on board are Weems, his mistress and partner in crime Mrs. Fischer, and two rival slave traders, Ned Gleet and Jubal Cain with their gangs of slaves—men and women chained together on deck. When the boat docks in Vicksburg, Rose remains on the boat while Ben and Hannibal follow Weems and Mrs. Fischer when they disembark along with the three trunks. After Hannibal gets a look at what’s in the trunks, he returns to the boat, leaving Ben to watch the two thieves. Ben knows he is in trouble when the thieves elude him, and he returns to the dock only to discover the boat has left. He faces the daunting task of making his way through the swamp along the river bank to spot where the boat will be near enough for him to swim to it. In addition to avoiding alligators, he must also watch out for the outlaw Levi Christmas and his gang who are searching for an opportunity to attack the “Silver Moon.”

Murder is not necessary for a good detective story, but it certainly makes a good story better and more interesting. I will not spoil Dead Water by revealing the name of the murdered character. Ben and Hannibal, in addition for searching for the three trunks full of gold, securities, and cash, must prove they are not the murderers. Luckily for them, they have Colonel Jefferson Davis (yes, that Jefferson Davis) who takes over the investigation and accepts Ben’s help, taking advantage of his medical and detection skills when a dead body is found on the boats big wheel.

Three elements in Dead Water made the novel more enjoyable for me. The first is the strong female villains and heroines. No damsels in distress.

The second is, in addition facing physical dangers, Ben also faces

the psychological demon that always seems to follow him. Although he is a devout Catholic and a skeptic when it comes to voodooism, he, nevertheless, often looks over his shoulder after confronting a voodoo priestess. Queen Regine puts a curse on Ben after he warns her to stay away from one of Rose’s students. Despite his skepticism about voodoo and his Catholic faith, Ben, feels Queen Regine’s presence every time he runs into obstacles that put his life in danger.

The third element is the motif of the Underground Railroad.

If you like reading crime fiction, you might enjoy reading blog posts by some crime fiction writers on the blog SleuthSayers.

A Slight Misstep

“You know what they say of white men in Louisiana…They come here seeking fortune, but all they find is a wet grave”

Should a critic confess that he can’t pin point why a novel by a novelist he has praised in the past is disappointing? Yes, and I so confess. No matter how good a storyteller a writer is, if she is also prolific and her main character is a series protagonist, the quality of her novels will, at some point, drop. Such is the case with the sixth novel in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series.

In Wet Grave amateur detective Benjamin January and his friend Rose Vitrac, the deceptively beautiful and scholarly former girl’s school teacher, investigate two murders.

Benjamin’s sister Olympe summons him to view the body of an old, drunken Black woman. He immediately recognizes Hesione LeGros whom he last saw 23 years ago when he was 16 and playing the piano at a party for Jean Lafitte’s band of pirates. The two of them had hidden behind the piano when a fight broke out among the guests. In her younger days, she was the mistress of one of Lafitte’s pirate captains.

Knowing that the authorities will not come and take away the body or investigate the murder of an old free Black woman, an angry Ben with his friend Rose decides to find out who killed Hesione and why. The investigation leads them to one of Jean Lafitte’s former pirate captains named Cut-Nose Chighizola, who might tell them more about the dead woman.

The failure of the authorities to investigate Hesione’s death causes Ben to direct his anger at the one White policeman friend he has, the Kaintuck, Lieutenant Abishag Shaw. “Anger flared up in” Ben “briefly, like kindling. It ignited a bigger log, an anger that did not leap and glare but that burned slow and deep and hot.” But he knows it isn’t Shaw’s fault because, he says to Shaw, you are “doing your duty, and going where you’re sent.” In the subplot, Shaw is sent to the Avocet plantation to investigate the alleged killing of Guifford Avocet by his brother Robert.

Ben’s anger is further stoked when he and Rose learn that 16-year-old Artois St. Chinian, an octoroon Rose was tutoring, is killed because he mistakenly received a box containing guns instead of the vacuum pump he had ordered.

The investigation of the two murders propel Ben and Rose into a battle against rebelling slaves, criminals hunting for Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure, and a hurricane that brings ashore alligators and snakes.

Wet Grave is not filled with as much action as the preceding novels. The romance between Ben and Rose, though expected and necessary, slows the pace of the action somewhat. Furthermore, despite the danger in which Benjamin and Rose find themselves, I didn’t feel the tension the situation should generate and, consequently, I had no sense of relief once the danger had passed.

The slow pace is due primarily to a problem with all serial novels: the author has to repeat the backstory of the protagonist so that the novel stands alone, even though it is one in a series. At the same time, the author must provide continuity with the other novels in terms of setting and especially the serial protagonist.

A few days after finishing the novel, something still kept nagging at me in the back of my mind, clamoring that something was wrong. What’s wrong is the Avocet subplot does not fit. Hambly does a good job of completing the plot within itself, but, despite the need for it as a plot device, it often tends to distract from rather than advance the main plot.

Despite the flaws, Wet Grave is still readable due to the magic of Hambly’s storytelling. In this novel, Hambly is like a person climbing stairs and misses a step; she stumbles but rights herself and continues.

The Amateur Becomes a Professional

Benjamin January in the first three novels in Barbara Hambly’s historicalamHhhh 

HhhHhhh       ; ggg   33211 series about a free man of color in 1930s New Orleans is an amateur detective pressed into service to save himself, a relative, or a friend. In Sold Down The River, the fourth novel in the series, Benjamin, in a sense, becomes a professional investigator when he is offered payment for his services.

Simon Fourchet, the master who owned Benjamin, his mother, his father, and his sister on the Bellefleur plantation, has come to New Orleans to ask Benjamin’s help in finding out who is trying to kill him on his new plantation. Two events on the plantation convinced Fourchet that someone is trying to kill him. His butler Gilles, who had the habit of sneaking a nip of the master’s whiskey, died from poison after his recent nip. The slave Reuben died in the mill fire that Fourchet believes was deliberately started by someone who wants to ruin him. He offers Benjamin $500 for his services.

Benjamin hates the cruel slave master who broke his ribs when he was six and stuffed his mother Livia in a barrel as punishment for disobedience. St. Denis Janvier bought the family, except for the father, from Fourchet, freed them, and Livia became his mistress. Benjamin and Olympe took his surname. Janvier made sure Benjamin got the best musical and medical education.

He can’t understand why Livia wants him to help Fourchet simply so he can repay the $100 he owes her. However, he realizes the $500 will allow him to move out of her house into a place of his own. The opportunity to escape her nagging and arguments by his friend Rose and his sister Olympe persuade Benjamin to take the job. They point out that if the culprit is not caught, the white planters in the area might decide that a slave rebellion is in the making and go on a killing rampage. Thus, Benjamin could prevent a possible massacre.

Benjamin goes undercover as a field slave on Fourchet’s Mon Triomphe plantation. He knows how to be subservient and not reveal his intelligence to the white planters. But the other slaves are a different matter, for anyone of them, especially the house slaves, might discover he isn’t who he pretends to be and expose him. Another danger is a slave trader might see the six feet three inch tall, 200 pound Benjamin January as a profitable piece of merchandise—the perfect field slave—and sell him up the river to the owner of a cotton plantation.

Hambly continues her complex plotting in this novel depicting the hard life of slave on a  sugar plantation, especially for the slaves of a brutal, tyrannical master, and the internal slave trade—slaves from Louisiana are sold to the cotton planters up river. The number of suspects further complicates the plot: Fourchet’s neighbor, all the slaves on the plantation, Fourchet’s two sons, his young wife, and the wife of his son Robert are suspects.

To give the plot authenticity and relief from the cruelty and violence depicted in the novel, she adds some humor in Sold Down The River through the field slave Harry, a trickster who barters goods with other slaves on other plantations. She also shows the men relaxing and joking, playing the dozens, a game I played as a boy and that is still played today. In the game, each player insults the other by talking about his relatives, especially his mother or sister. Benjamin secures his place among the slaves when he displays his skill at the game.

What I liked most about the novel is the irony of an ex-slave going to work for his former master who agrees to pay him.