Unlike some of the more recent Benjamin January books, this has only one storyline. That's a relief. There's a lot of suspense as Benjamin and Hannibal, along with Lieutenant Abishag Shaw, enter the "slaveholders' republic" of Texas in search of a free girl who has been kidnapped from New Orleans and sold into slavery. The whole experience reminds me of a meme I saw this week: "The single star on the Texas flag is actually a review". I don't think any of the three men on the rescue expedition would have rated it any higher. As usual, amazing depth of historical research by Barbara Hambly and, as usual since Severn House started to publish this series, it lacks sorely needed maps.

Hambly has done a remarkable job with this series. Seventeen books in, the quality has not suffered and I'm still looking forward to reading the next installment. ( )

Lady of Perdition does a very good job of being exactly what it is: one volume in a mystery series that simultaneously offers a puzzle that needs solving and a glimpse of life in a particular historical moment. The puzzle(s) (actually, there are two of them) aren’t particularly compelling, but the context the author sets them in makes for engrossing reading. The dcentral character, Benjamin January, is a free black man living in New Orleans in 1840, but he finds himself in the Republic of Texas, also known as the “Slaveholders’ Republic.” January continually walks a fine line—he can’t appear too intelligent, to independent, too anything. And he knows that he could easily be abducted and sold into slavery—free papers are easy enough to burn if a potential slave merchant has the financial motivation. We see a place and a time full of tensions: between Catholics and Protestants, between free and enslaved Blacks, between women and the demands of the male-controlled world, between Mexicans and Texans.

This is a book that keeps one going because of the strength of its characters and the challenges they face because of their own identities, rather than by virtue of a particularly complex mystery. Read it for the picture it offers of the time, not for its central “mystery.” ( )