House of the Patriarch
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
No one can talk to the dead . . . can they? Free man of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery.
New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, that last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloe Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can't say no.
Three weeks ago, seventeen-year-old Eve Russell boarded a steam-boat - and never got off it. Mrs Russell is adamant Eve's been kidnapped, but how could someone remove a teenager from a crowded deck in broad daylight? And why would anyone target Eve?
The answer lies in New York, a hotbed of new religions and beliefs, of human circuses and freak shows . . . and of blackbirders, who'll use any opportunity to kidnap a free man of color and sell him into slavery. January's determined to uncover the truth, but will he ever be able to return to New Orleans to share it?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Hambly's outstanding 18th Benjamin January mystery (after 2020's Lady of Perdition), a well-to-do English couple in 1840 hire January, a free Black New Orleans musician with a reputation as a detective, to locate their 17-year-old daughter, Eve Russell, who recently vanished from a steamboat in Long Island Sound. January, who's also a French trained physician banned from practicing in the prejudiced United States, travels to New York City, where he finds racial hatred more poisonous than in New Orleans. He soon rescues a Black woman and her daughter from molesters, and aids a white man, Phineas T. Barnum, who's being pursued by moneylenders. The perilous search for Eve leads to an upstate community of religious phonies, who prey on credulous farmers and escaped slaves using the Underground Railroad to reach Canada, among others. Hambly's masterful historical detail, scrupulous character portrayal, and psychological analysis of human frailties contribute handsomely to her storytelling. This long-running series shows no signs of losing steam.
