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My business requires me to spend a lot of time in New Orleans. I've never really subscribed to the premise that there can be too much of a good thing, but once I'm ready to leave, I'm usually ready to go, and by the time I need to go back, I'm usually beginning to miss the place. The balance of this is upset, however, on an annual basis with the appearance, normally in June or July, of a new Benjamin January novel by Barbara Hambly.
These novels --- the latest, DIE UPON A KISS, being the fifth in the series --- are set in the New Orleans of the 1830s and take place primarily in the French Quarter. The Quarters haven't changed much since the time in which Hambly's novels are set, and any number of the places that serve as a backdrop to the January novels are still around. Hambly's books are so well-written and researched that it is almost impossible to resist the urge to drop everything and make the excursion to the Crescent City, to walk down the less-traveled streets of the Quarters while turning the pages of her latest books and tracing January's footsteps.
DIE UPON A KISS is no exception. Hambly has chosen with this novel to focus more on January's prowess as a musician, as a plot vehicle for moving the tale through early New Orleans. January, a free man of color who is a physician and musician, is a member of the orchestra that has been assembled by legendary impresario Lorenzo Belaggio, who has brought the first Italian opera to New Orleans. January, leaving the American Theater after a late rehearsal, stumbles into an attack upon Belaggio and is able to adroitly rescue him. The investigation of the attack does not suffer for lack of suspects. There are two of the tenors in the company, who certainly have motive and opportunity. There is the manager of a rival New Orleans' opera company, for whom Belaggio's arrival on the local scene comes at a most inopportune time. And, of course, there are the two points on the love triangle between Belaggio and the two sopranos in the company. Or is the attack something else entirely?
Hambly's January series is much, much more than a set of detective novels. Hambly, with incremental steps, has been fashioning a treatise of the history and culture of New Orleans in the early 1830s and slipping it to her audience by osmosis. While her novels stand alone, quite well, as detective novels, they also provide a fascinating historical perspective into a time and place that was quite unique and whose customs and mores resonate within New Orleans and influence it to this very moment. Hambly, at the same time, is able to very nimbly introduce enough of the backstory from previous January novels into each new one so that readers new to the series will not feel lost and adrift but will rather be encouraged not only to read the new novel but also to pick up on what has gone before. Any one of these accomplishments would be significant for a writer; Hambly quite handily accomplishes all of them. DIE UPON A KISS hopefully will continue to enlarge Hambly's already significant audience.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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