So I decided to dip into a heavier mystery series than usual--Barbara Hambly's series set in 1830's New Orleans. I know a bit about New Orleans history and wanted to read a series from the viewpoint of people of color rather than the Creole or American viewpoint.
The first A Free Man of Color is excellent at conveying the mix of cultures and the peculiar relationships between the races of old New Orleans. While I don't like books that drop huge honking chunks of back story in the first few chapters, I did find it a little hard to figure out the hero's relatives and decrees of relationship. Ben January is a free man of color, meaning he has never been a slave. But in the peculiar way we have in America because he is very dark-skinned he can't practice medicine as he was trained to do in France but falls back on his musical training to make a living in his home of New Orleans. We certainly get a less charming picture of New Orleans from Hambly's historically researched book than we did from the old Francis Parkinson Keyes novels set there or even Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk.
The second in the series Fever Season was extremely dark and fairly graphic about the mistreatment of people of color. The atmosphere of hot, humid New Orleans exactly matched my memories of the late June week I spent there. I don't doubt for a moment that her fictionalized account of newspaper rumors and of beatings and mistreatment on plantations could have happened. But, I whined, this isn't the comforting, charming mystery set in old New Orleans I wanted to read. Well pull up your big girl pants and settle for accuracy and a well-written mystery instead.
