Collection
Series
Publication
Description
Fiction. Suspense. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML:A lush and haunting novel of a city steeped in decadent pleasures . . . and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal. It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted�??by murder. Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has been strangled to death. With the authorities reluctant to become involved, Ben begins his own inquiry, which will take him through the seamy haunts of riverboatmen and into the huts of voodoo-worshipping slaves. But soon the eyes of suspicion turn toward Ben�??for, black as the slave who fathered him, this free man of color is still the perfect scapegoat. . . . Praise for A Free Man of Color �??A smashing debut. Rich and exciting with both substance and… (more)
Language
Original language
User reviews
The murder victim is a manipulative young freeborn “octoroon,” a light-skinned colored girl of the sort prized as mistresses by the Creole elite. The Kaintuck police officer investigating the case encounters resistance from various quarters when suspicion points to a young white man – much to the disgust of protagonist Benjamin January, a slave-born but Paris-educated free man of color. Disgusted though he is, January probably would not have risked himself by pursuing the case if the suspicion had not been transferred to him. Ultimately he risks both life and liberty to bring about a resolution and clear his name. The story is nail-bitingly tense in more than one place.
I found the solution of the mystery to be satisfyingly logical. Some of the clues were obscure enough to make a reader-solution unlikely, but nothing worse than is common in a genre that considers itself a failure if the reader guesses the ending. I’ve never been inclined to try very hard to second-guess an author in any case. When I read a good book I tend to surrender myself to it. Let the author take me for a ride; that’s what I came for. And “A Free Man of Color” is a darned good ride.
Some people may question the “right” of a white woman to write a story about the experience of black and colored people. And of course, I’m another white woman reviewing it. I would suggest that people – black people and white people – should read it before making a judgement. There is nothing over-simplified or sanitized, here. The characters (of all colors) and their motivations are complex and often morally ambiguous. Ms Hambly has clearly done her research, and the insight she brings to this highly race/color/class-conscious society has the combined power of her training as a historian and her ability as a fiction writer to put herself into characters’ heads. In creating Benjamin January, a black man with one white grandparent, who grew up in this culture and then left it in his twenties to return as a mature adult, Hambly has designed a character who can see the culture from both the inside and the outside and is therefore well positioned to mirror her insight.
Much has changed since he has been gone. Suddenly the Americans are moving in. The British and French, which didn't much get along with each other but at least understood 'the custom of the country,' are being bought out by brash new Americans who only understand two things - money, and the color of your skin. Benjamin as a colored man cannot find work as a surgeon, only as a musician. He's playing the quadroon ball during Mardi Gras when one of the women is found murdered. He knows the owner of the hotel is not about to call in the police to investigate. After all, the woman is basically a courtesan, and the suspects are powerful and wealthy white men. But Benjamin is so sick of this kind of prejudice that he begins to ask questions himself. Next thing he knows, the police have been happy to investigate a much less tricky suspect - him.
I really enjoyed this book. Benjamin is a great character with a complicated background. Being away from home so much gives his a different perspective on things that the other characters take for granted. I realized that this was a time period I knew practically nothing about, but certainly a place I'd love to read about again. 5 stars.
This book is a good mystery, the clues were there for the reader, but one had to work for them. The distractions and red herrings were well done. I am glad to have read this, because it is informative of a time and place and culture which is very foreign to me. However, it did feel like a bit of a slog. There was so much information which needed to be conveyed so the reader would be able to have even a glimpse into that time, place and the people there. I found it all so, so dark, looking into the morass of the human heart. That desire which is always present to find someone who is weaker than yourself to put down. It is very ugly, and overwhelmed me to the point that the story was painful. So, I can't say I enjoyed this book. I will say that it seems well researched and is well written, the story and characters are well drawn, and I would recommend it to anyone who didn't already struggle with depression over the human condition.
The backstory of this mystery is, in my observation, more interesting than the mystery to be solved. I wasn't able to get into the book on first read, and made it to
What I found irksome was the mystery itself. The sleuth's reasons for investigating the murder are, in theory, the strongest possible. Why then was I so indifferent to the crime and the eventual punishment? Because I don't think the author was fully engaged with that aspect of the story. It's not that it felt perfunctory, exactly, but it felt...extraneous...like she put it in so she'd have a reason to tell us a story in this setting.
Since it's the first of a series, I might pick up the next and see if there's some change that could make me follow the rest...but frankly, it's low on my priority list. Check back in 2013 or so (assuming the world doesn't end in 2012).
Neutral response...hazard at your own risk, historical fans.
This first book in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series was educational as well as entertaining. It was interesting to read about the caste structure in antebellum New Orleans, and the disruption caused by the encroachment of Americans and their value system. There was a surprising plot twist at the end that seemed out of place for 1833, and it caused me to lower my rating. I still enjoyed the book, though, and I've added the next one to my reading wish list.
About halfway through the book, the story did pick up and I got more involved in the actual mystery. The ending was satisfactory and wrapped up most of the story lines. Through the whole book, however, I always felt that New Orleans itself was the author’s main focus and the mystery was secondary.
I will definitely try the second book in this series in the hope that the author takes as much time to flesh out the characters as she did in this book with the setting. In Ben January, a free black man, trained as a surgeon and working as a musician, she has a character worth developing. This author is great at delivering the history, I also hope that she delivers on the mystery next time as well.
Previously (and many years ago) I'd read a few of Hambly's early fantasy books, and not been overly impressed - they were OK, but didn't transcend any of the genre standards. After reading 'A Free Man of Color' at a friend's recommendation, I can confirm that
Aside from a few suggestions that voodoo curses and/or protective charms may be efficacious, the book does not have fantasy elements - it's historical fiction. Benjamin January is the titular 'free man of color.' Of African heritage and raised in New Orleans, he is both a trained surgeon and an accomplished musician. Recently returned to his home town, after having spent the past few years in France, where he was accorded a certain degree of respect, he's experiencing a great deal of 'culture shock' in adjusting to the inferior status he holds in New Orleans. And the racism in Louisiana is getting worse, as the region's French culture is diluted by an influx of boorish men with an 'American' identity and an assumption that anyone with dark skin deserves nothing more than to be enslaved.
The reader has to ask why January would stay in such an inhospitable environment. Hambly strives to answer the question: January is fleeing his grief over the death of his wife; he feels an obligation to friends and family; he has a sense of 'belonging' and 'home' tied to New Orleans. I didn't find all these reasons fully convincing. I myself would've been outta there in a hot second. But I could accept that someone else might feel differently, and might've behaved as January does here.
The plot itself is a standard mystery/investigation: During a courtesans' ball, a woman is found murdered. As the victim was a woman of mixed race, and of 'low moral standing' to boot, the first reaction is to sweep the incident under the closest convenient rug. Benjamin January, with an innate sense of justice, doesn't allow that to happen. However, soon afterwards he realizes that his attempt to do the right things may not have been in his self-interest. He was one of the last people to see the victim alive, and it'd be far easier to pin the crime on a black man than to investigate a crime which was probably committed by a white man, and one likely highly placed in society, at that. January's only hope to avoid being arrested may be to try to solve the crime himself, in order to clear his name.
But as he looks into what may have happened and who may have had a grudge against this woman, things only get more complicated. For she wasn't a particularly nice person, and the list of people who may have held something against her only gets longer, the more details emerge...
The solid mystery plot is raised from 3 to 4 stars by the meticulous and well-incorporated historical and social details; which make for fascinating reading - and also by the satisfying yet bittersweet ending. There were several 'easy outs' the author could have taken in finishing up the story - and she opted for none of them, resulting in a much better book than this might've been.
I'd definitely read more in this series.
January is not fabulous but is a pretty interesting character. He moved to Paris and worked as a musician and a surgeon, married, and returned home to NO after the death of his wife. His experiences elsewhere give him perspective on "how things are" in New Orleans. He is very conscious of what he must do to survive, but has enough pride to hate doing it. His relationship with an uneducated, inarticulate white police lieutenant has some interesting moments.
The book takes a long time to get going, as Hambly does a lot of scene-setting and introduces a lot of characters of different racial compositions and social stations. We don't know for quite a while who are the central players and who are secondary. This is not in itself terrible, but it made it a little tough to get my bearings in the first 150 pages. After that, we had seen some characters enough to get the hang of who and what they were, and follow the story more easily. The book's final third moves along swiftly and takes good advantage of the setting Hambly has established.
Once the pace picked up and I had my bearings, I found this an enjoyable read. I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Ms. Hambly manages to introduce a dizzying array of characters, all of whom have stories of their own. It makes the book very dense but also very satisfying. We see how we see how all these lives overlap and intertwine. By the end of the book, we're surprised, but it all does make sense.
A Free Man of Color is satisfying writing, moving drama, very good history, and an engaging story.
When a beautiful, but viscious octoroon is murdered, January, a free black piano player/surgeon is the primary suspect, and when officials don't seem much interested in clearing him, he
1830s NOLA is a great setting. The city was only recently annexed by the US, and the new influx of Americans are changing the culture of the city. For January, these changes are all for the worse. He grew up in a world of creoles, French settlers, aristocratic refugees from Haiti/Santo Domingo, and Spanish grandees who have been there for generations. Their ties and interests are to Paris, where the wealthy send their children and do their shopping, not to the rest of the continent they are inhabiting. (Trivia: Josephine, empress of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a creole aristocrat.) Their comparatively tolerant racial attitudes (color matters, a lot) is being supplanted by the American assumption that all blacks are slaves, or should be. For the first time in his life, he has to carry papers showing that he is a free person, and if a white person should tear up the papers, his freedom will evaporate. Naturally he, and the rest of the colored population resent this, just as the long-time inhabitants resent the encroachment of the boorish and uncivilized Americans, who have no culture, only money.
Hambly has used the setting as the backdrop of a murder. The mystery is well-plotted, and her writing is excellent. I'm not giving this 5 stars because the human characters are less well developed than the city, but I'm hoping that changes as the series develops.
Review written in October, 2011
I, along with another half-dozen people, met Ms. Hambly at the Gallifrey convention in an arranged hour-long conversation the con called a kaffeeklasche. She talked, we asked questions. One of the things she mentioned was this series of historical murder
The setting is 1830s New Orleans, and starts at a Mardi Gras party. Our protagonist is Benjamin January, or Janvier when French is spoken. He is, as the title has it, a free man of color - born a slave, later freed. We see this world through his eyes and through the limitations imposed on him in this society of Creoles, Americans, Africans, and the meticulously stratified society of the "sang mêlés", or mixed bloods.
He has returned home after nearly 2 decades in Paris, where he trained as both a surgeon and a fine musician. He no longer quite fits in New Orleans -- not really a fish out of water, but rather a fish aware that where he is, is not the only kind of life he could live. This seamlessly shows the reader the prickly bits of situations that might otherwise not be fully understood. It is a world most strange to me.
There is a welter of surnames, so it is sometimes hard to follow who's who and who's important to the story. There is a welter of unusual words, some slang (will have to work absquatulate and horripilated into a sentence sometime), some French, some African, and some period pieces. But there is a rhythm to the language that is enchanting.
There's also a murder, lives in peril, people learning who they can trust, and a satisfying resolution. I won't spoil your fun if you haven't read it yet. And I do heartily recommend you seek it out if you have not read it.