Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Set in New Orleans in 1839, Hambly's fascinating 15th Benjamin January novel (after 2016's Drinking Gourd) finds the freed slave and Paris-trained doctor and his pregnant wife, Rose, planning to open a school to educate "colored girls." On a sweltering July day, Sir John Oldmixton of the British Consulate, who's well acquainted with January's intelligence and discretion, asks him to recover some documents that were in the possession of Henry Brooke, an Englishman who was recently discovered shot to death and floating in a canal. January's first impulse is to refuse, but when Jacquette Filoux, a black woman who had been Brooke's mistress, is accused of the crime, he decides to investigate. That Jacquette's young daughter openly declares that her mother shot Mr. Brooke complicates January's task. As he digs deeper, he uncovers parallels between Brooke's murder and one that occurred when he was in Paris a decade before. This well-researched mystery offers readers an appealing cast of characters, a suitably complex plot, and some eye-opening historical details. Agent: Frances Collin, Frances Collin Literary. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

The new Benjamin January novel finds the nineteenth-century Louisiana musician and sleuth reaching into his own past to solve a murder in the present. Nearly a decade ago, in France, he let a murderer get away; now, an offer from a British spy could let him redeem his mistake and bring another killer to justice. But how far is he willing to go? Will he put his own life and the lives of his family at risk? January is a wonderful character, a former slave who is now a professional piano player and amateur crime-solver, a man of color living in a world dominated and controlled by people who believe anyone who looks different from them is not worthy of their consideration or respect. Hambly does a fine job of presenting January's world realistically, and the mysteries January is called upon to solve feel appropriate to their historical period, but at the same time entirely contemporary. Perhaps because murder is timeless.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist