Lady of Perdition

October 28, 2019
Set in 1840, Hambly’s deeply researched 17th Benjamin January mystery (after 2018’s Cold Bayou) takes free black man January and his consumptive musician friend, Hannibal Sefton, from New Orleans to the Republic of Texas, where animosity is seething between nationalists who want Texas to remain independent and those who favor joining the United States. January’s dedication to helping black people obtain justice leads him to try to rescue Selina Bellinger, a young mulatto woman from New Orleans. Selina’s lover duped her into eloping with him to Texas, where she was raped and trafficked. The stakes rise after the scheming Valentina Taggart, who helps January and Sefton in the Selina matter, is accused of murdering her wealthy rancher husband. When January and Sefton investigate, they’re plunged into the Taggart family’s “poisoned mess of drunken violence.” Risking himself in a country where killing a slave is not considered murder, January can’t resist saving helpless women from casual male brutality. Hambly’s well-wrought denunciation of slavery and her skillful defense of women’s rights resound from January’s times to our own. Agent: Frances Collin, Frances Collin Literary.

November 1, 2019
A former slave with a highly developed sense of justice risks everything to serve it. In April 1840, Benjamin January, a Paris-trained physician and music teacher, leaves his family in New Orleans (Cold Bayou, 2018, etc.) to try to rescue Selina Bellinger, a former student of his. Selina ran away with a scoundrel named Seth Javel, who took her to the Republic of Texas and sold her as a slave. January follows, pretending to be the slave valet of his friend Hannibal Sefton, whose ownership will protect him. Accompanying them is tough Kentuckian Abishag Shaw, who terrorizes Javel into revealing the name of Selina's purchaser, a slave trader who thinks nothing of giving prospective buyers a chance to try out the young women he sells. One of his slaves secretly tells January that Selina was sold to a rancher named Gideon Pollack. They hope to buy Selina back, but before meeting Pollack, they run into Valentina Taggart, a woman they know who turns out to be married to Pollack's neighbor and knows that January is no slave. Valentina, a wild and stunning young woman who agreed to marry Vin Taggart even though she knew her land was her main attraction, agrees to help, but her freedom to act is hampered by the presence of her husband's hateful mother and aunt. When Pollack, who denies having bought Selina, is badly wounded in a duel, January uses his medical skills to save him. Rescuing Selina, he sends her on the dangerous trip back to New Orleans while he and Hannibal stay to help Valentina, who's been accused of murdering her husband. The success of January's mission requires him to use Hannibal as a frontman to cut through the lies and political intrigue raging in a divided Texas, where land is everything and murder an easy way to improve fortunes. A riveting exploration of a little-known period of Texas history intensified by gut-wrenching depictions of people's enduring inhumanity.

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Starred review from December 15, 2019
Texas, 1840. Benjamin January, physician, music teacher, and sleuth, has left his New Orleans home to track down a woman who's run off with a disreputable man who has apparently sold her into slavery. Unlike Louisiana, where a free Black man like January can live in relative peace, Texas is a very different place, proclaiming itself a slaveholder's paradise. In coming here to find the woman, January is literally risking his own life, which becomes all too clear when he is nearly hanged, saved only by the efforts of Valentina Taggart, wife of a powerful land baron. When Valentina is accused of the murder of her husband, she turns to Benjamin for help. This seventeenth installment in the series may well be the best of the bunch; although the quality of the January novels has been high from the beginning, this one profits from the historically accurate and deeply disturbing portrait of Texas before statehood. It's a stark and occasionally brutal story, and Hambly tells it superbly, in prose that is vivid and empathetic. For fans of this fine series, this is a must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)