An Anemic Novel

Since amateur detective Benjamin January married an Arab woman in Paris, where his mother's protector sent him to study medicine and music, we should have expected Hambly to sooner or later write a novel with the centuries old conflict between Islam and Christianity as a backdrop. She makes an anemic attempt to use the religious conflict in Ran Away, the eleventh novel in her Benjamin January series.

 

A Muslim, known as the Turk in New Orleans, who saved the life of Benjamin’s former wife Ayasha when he lived in Paris, is accused of throwing two of his concubines out of the attic window of his house, allegedly for stealing some gold from him. Benjamin feels obligated to prove the man did not do kill the girls because the Turk saved his wife Ayasha when he lived in Paris.

A little over a third of the novel is the backstory of Benjamin’s time in Paris, where he met his first wife, Ayasha, who died of cholera in 1833, and the circumstances under which he met the Turk, Huseyin Pasha in 1827. Benjamin found that his skills as a musician earned him more money than his surgical skills because, even in enlightened France, no white person would allow a black doctor to work on him or her. The Turks have no such qualms, so Benjamin is called upon to attend Shamira, a young Jewish woman in Huseyin Pasha’s harem. He realizes she has been poisoned but will live, and also that, if he doesn’t get her out of the house before the master arrives, he might lose his life. He need not worry, however, because Jamilla, Huseyin Pasha’s number one wife who called upon his service, helps him escape. The next day she calls upon him again to find Shamira who has run away.

Sabid al-Muzaffar, Huseyin Pasha’s enemy, is also looking for Shamira. Ayasha knows that Shamira is at a convent and hurries to warn her and help her get away before Sabid al-Muzaffar and the police arrive. Unfortunately, Ayasha is caught. Benjamin learns from one of the street urchins who sometime help him that Ayasha is being held in Sabid al-Muzaffar’s house. Huseyin Pasha, believing Sabid al-Muzaffar might have kidnapped Shamira arrives and helps Benjamin free Ayasha. To tell you how would be a spoiler.

Ten Years later in New Orleans, Benjamin has the opportunity to repay the Turk when Oliver Breche, an apothecary, claims he saw him throw the two girls, Karida and Noura, out of the window. His claim, however, is suspect because he was in love with Noura and wants to prevent Jamilla from claiming her body so that he can give Noura a Christian burial in his family crypt. In addition to searching for evidence to clear the Turk, Benjamin must find a way to protect Jamilla and her son from the mob, egged on by Breche, surrounding their house.

The novel is not without merits. It has a red herring that leads the reader and Benjamin down the wrong path, and the identity of the murderer is a true surprise. The backstory gives the reader a more detail history of Benjamin’s time in Paris as a young man. Another merit is the skillful way Hambly keeps the reader guessing about identity and motive of the murderer.

Nevertheless, the novel is a letdown. The plot incidents seem contrived. It reads too much like the author had to fulfill a contract and therefore had to come up with a plot. The subplot involving Pasha and Sabid, after the action shifts to time present in New Orleans, does nothing to advance the main plot and seems designed merely to get Benjamin into another dangerous adventure and to tie up loose ends of the backstory. 

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Voodooism

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?

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.