Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

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Barbara Hambly lived in New Orleans for three years with her late husband, science fiction writer George Alec Effinger. The city provides the setting for her crime fiction, the pre-Civil War Benjamin January series. What better way to begin a journey through time and the New Orleans of mystery-writing imagination than with a tale of January, former slave and sometime sleuth. Ms. Hambly’s new novel is Renfield, Slave of Dracula.

“If they fear she has been kidnapped, why not call the City Guard?” Benjamin January paused on the steps that led up to the gallery of the garçonnière, looking down at his mother in the narrow yard. He’d just returned from teaching his first piano class of the winter — new students, Americans, in the suburb of St. Mary upriver — and had been hoping to get a few hours’ nap before he had to dress up again and play for a subscription ball over on Rue Orleans. There was a saying among the musicians of New Orleans, You can sleep during Lent — which wasn’t entirely true because the holy season was dotted with “exceptions,” like Washington’s Birthday balls — but the week or two after the first frost were always the worst. He’d played for the opening of the French Opera House last night, and had gone on to provide quadrilles and pantaleones at a ball at the townhouse of a wealthy sugar planter. The sellers of fresh milk and crayfish had been beginning their morning rounds when he’d finally returned to his room above his mother’s kitchen.

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