Fever Season

By Barbara Hambly

Benjamin January made his debut in bestselling author Barbara Hambly's A Free Man of Color, a haunting mélange of history and mystery. Now he returns in another novel of greed, madness, and murder amid the dark shadows and dazzling society of old New Orleans, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.

The summer of 1833 has been one of brazen heat and brutal pestilence, as the city is stalked by Bronze John—the popular name for the deadly yellow fever epidemic that tests the healing skills of doctor and voodoo alike. Even as Benjamin January tends the dying at Charity Hospital during the steaming nights, he continues his work as a music teacher during the day.

When he is asked to pass a message from a runaway slave to the servant of one of his students, January finds himself swept into a tempest of lies, greed, and murder that rivals the storms battering New Orleans. And to find the truth he must risk his freedom...and his very life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307785282

Barbara Hambly

Barbara Hambly was born in San Diego. Her interest in fantasy began with reading The Wizard of Oz at an early age and has continued ever since. She attended the University of California, Riverside, specialising in medieval history and then spent a year at the University at Bordeaux in Southern France as a teaching and research assistant. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Fever Season

[carol_w-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second Benjamin January historical mystery set in 1830's New Orleans. It's also good, if a bit grim. Barbara Hambly is amazing in her storytelling and her historical insight. The story picks up more or less where A Free Man of Color left off, increasing the realness of its feel as a window into the past. This story centers around a runaway slave and features a notorious historical figure. Hambly adds notes providing details of the historical sources and a very clear statement that this is a work of fiction.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Second in the Benjamin January series. This sophomore outing has a better plot line than the first, but it's almost smothered to death by the author's repetitive style and unnecessary incidents illustrating points that no longer need to be made. If it had been sharply edited and cut by about 50 pages, it would have made a truly suspenseful read. As it was, I nearly gave up entirely around the 200th page and the 30th iteration of the main character's need to watch his tongue when speaking to whites. There's a good story in there, and it's based in part on an actual event. Perhaps if I hadn't had my reading time fractured of late, I would have sailed over the sloggy bits and not minded them so much. It picked up smartly at the end. This author has a lot of potential, and I will probably return to this series after giving it a good rest. I can't imagine she wrote 8 more books that all have that bloat in the middle. But if she does it to me one more time, that will be the end.Review written in November 2011

[pussreboots · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here's a book and a series I had completely forgotten about until the series was recommended during a recent round of the Book Blogger Hop. Going through my book diary I realized I'd read a book from the series. Then I remembered the fevers and murders during a hot New Orleans summer.

[tymfos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was eager to read this second book in the Benjamin January series, and it did not disappoint; indeed, I found myself drawn into the story more quickly than by the previous volume in the series, "A Free Man of Color." Hambly has done her homework and is skilled at bringing her setting to life; you can almost feel the heat and humidity, smell the stench of death in the yellow fever hospitals, experience the sting of prejudice and injustice. The mystery itself is sophisticated and thoroughly linked to the historical setting and some real people who lived in New Orleans at that time.

[storyjunkie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Masterfully crafted, the events follow necessities imposed by the stratification of pre-Civil War New Orleans' society. Benjamin January ends up detective because he is a free man of color, and cannot count on the white authorities. Following disappearances, a murder that is not what it seems, and the strange behavior of one of the most powerful women in the city, January risks his life and his freedom to find answers.Thematically, and dramatically focusing on the tenuous nature of freedom for colored people, Hambly creates a heartbreaking world that manages to be as hopeful, cruel, inexplicable and odd as the human beings who occupy it. Emphasis on active cruelty as well as casual disdain, but some nice looks at love and hope too.