Great new addition to the series | Dead and Buried (A Benjamin January Mystery)

Good Book, Bad Typesetting | Dead and Buried (A Benjamin January Mystery) | Barbara Hambly

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	• Dead and Buried (A Benjamin January Mystery) Barbara Hambly Severn House Publishers, 2010 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At last! Another great mystery

Fans of Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series have been avidly waiting for the next book for far too long! At last it is here! Once again, we meet Benjamin January (Janvier), a man of African descent living in New Orleans in 1836. Although he is a free man, the book abounds with details that make the reader feel he/she gets an honest picture of what it must have been like for people in that city at that time.

Benjamin is both a surgeon and a musician. After living in France for years, he returns to New Orleans, and as the series progresses, sets his mind to solving a number of mysteries. This book opens with a New Orleans funeral: the coffin drops and a stranger's body rolls from the casket. Benjamin finds out who the stranger is, and must try to solve who the killer is (the body was the victim of murder), before a young British man is hanged for the crime.

This is one of the best of the series. I truly wish Ms. Hambly would find herself on the NY Times best seller list so that the publisher would be motivated to ask for more of the January mysteries. Keep 'em coming, and I'll keep on buying! For sure!

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Great new addition to the series

I was delighted when I learned that there was finally a new Benjamin January story, after too long a hiatus. Still, "Dead and Buried" was definitely worth the wait. (And I agree with the other reviewer that it would be extra-cool if the next story delved a little deeper into Abishag Shaw's history.)

This time out, Ben and Hannibal attend a funeral, only to discover that the body in question is not that of the person they thought they were mourning. What's worse is that Hannibal recognizes this displaced dead man--but he won't explain how he knew him or what their relationship was.

As Hannibal tries to hide deeper in a fog of alcohol and drugs, Ben must discover who's responsible for the murder of the man in the coffin without getting himself or anyone he loves killed. The answers reveal a new side of Hannibal, and they also illuminate a dark facet of the complex and unjust society that prevailed in New Orleans and the United States at the time.

As with all the other stories in this series, the author brilliantly brings New Orleans in the 1830s to exuberant life. She knows New Orleans so well, and she seems to love the place, big bugs and all--it really is like time-travel. This book is a terrific journey.

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Good Book, Bad Typesetting

This book has been produced by a new publishing house. While the book is very good and is a fine continuation of the series, the "physical hardback" leaves something to be desired. In an attempt to save paper it has narrow margins. The lines appear to be closer together than the prior books. The net impact of this is a book which "swims" on the page and is hard to read. It is unfortunate that it is not set in the same fashion as the earlier books.

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love these books

With the exception of one in this series, I love these books! I must admit, I don't really care about the mystery so much - I look forward to getting lost in the descriptions of the characters, city, weather, clothing, relationships and the time. It will be a sad day when eventually there are no more books to be written about Benjamin January et al. I won't go into the whos whys and wherefores of this book, I will only say if you are also a fan then read it, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

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Benjamin and friends are back!

What a great book Barbara Hambly has given us for the return of her terrific character, Benjamin January. The mystery is excellent and because of it we learn all about Ben's close friend, Hannibal--someone I'm sure all fans of this series, like myself, have been waiting to find out about. Ms. Hambly's books continue to be a tremendous source for learning more about slavery, race relations and the gens du couleur libre in New Orleans in the 1800s.

I sure wish that one of the books in this great series would be made into a major motion picture or a Masterpiece Theater production. They truly deserve to be!

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The new 'Benjamin January' novel from the best-selling author - New Orleans, 1836. When free black musician and surgeon Benjamin January attends the funeral of a friend, an accident tips the dead man out of his coffin ? only to reveal an unexpected inhabitant. Just one person recognises the corpse of the white man: Hannibal Sefton, fiddle-player and one of January?s closest friends. But he seems unwilling to talk about his connection to the dead man . . .

reviews: page 1, 2

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