Ran Away by Barbara Hambly

“This particular author is a master craftsman at weaving interesting historical tidbits into a murder mystery story.”  Wait a minute; I wrote that a year ago about Jason Goodwin, when he was covering the Ottoman Empire, circa 1836, through the eyes of Yashim, the Eunuch, a private detective.  Now we have January {Jannisary?} as a “detective” {long before detectives}, who is a black man from New Orleans, again, circa 1836.

O.K., I’m well-aware that sometimes authors write under pseudonames in order to attract a different audience.  In this case, January has a very female heterosexual wife-type partner, and we should remember that Yashim was a eunuch.!

But the more relevant, yet still salaciously interesting, book comparison, is to our April 2012 library book, “Cane River”.  The heart of each story is the decades just before the American Civil War.  Both books are told through the eyes of an African-American.  Truly, the protagonists of both books represent the epitome of the merger of African and American.  And yet, no two people could be more different, nor come at their world view more differently. 

The Cane River women are a family of slave women, made concubines/wives by lecherous French white men, through the length of the nineteenth century. These women also have tenacles reaching to New Orleans, but the great world beyond is unknown to them. 

January’s ease at moving about in a world of slavery, is probably a story-book fiction that bears no close inspection.  However, it may be the sort of fiction that provides hope for those caught up in an ugly world.  He is a doctor, learned, and a professional musician, living in Paris as the story opens.  A bon vivant and man-about-town, but with humble origins, as is Yashim, so as not to be a member of the 1%.

Just like Yashim, who flowed in and out of the harem with surprising ease, January, likewise spends an inordinate amount of time around a bevy of concubines, more than most happily married men. 

So, anyway; I love this author’s work, be he/she Goodwin/Hambly.  As I pen this note,  I haven’t progressed beyond the first half of “Ran Away”, thus January is still in Paris.  The last half of the book, I am assured, will take place in New Orleans.  The Paris scenes, streets, and buildings are poetically captured.  The Ottoman knowledge is reminiscent of Goodwin.(?).  The theme is classic Yashim – a harem girl has been abducted {by a bad Arab} and is now in a nunery; January will save her.

A week later and I have now finished the second half of the Hambly book, “Ran Away.”  The action has moved to New Orleans and Doctor January is using forensic techniques to solve a murder case, which will exonerate his Ottoman friend from Paris, who is being unjustly accused, mostly because of racial and religious bias.  The plight of enslaved Africans is explored in side issues to the central plotline.  Dr. January is running an underground escape route as well as solving murders.