Good Man Friday
Published on 9. May 2019
256 pages
978-1-78010-393-8 (ISBN)
Description
Free man of color Benjamin January travels to Washington, DC, to track down a missing mathematician in this "excellent" pre-Civil War mystery (
Publishers Weekly, starred review).
New Orleans, 1838. Living in antebellum New Orleans as a free man of color, Benjamin January has always taken whatever work he could find. But when he suddenly loses his job playing piano at extravagant parties, he finds himself taking on an entirely new-and exceedingly dangerous-enterprise. Sugar planter Henri Viellard has hired Benjamin to travel with him to Washington, DC. Henri's friend, an elderly English mathematician named Selwyn Singletary, was last seen in Washington before he went missing. With Benjamin's help, Henri intends to track him down.
Plunged into a murky world of spies, slave snatchers, and dirty politicians, Benjamin uncovers a coded secret that he attempts to decipher with the help of a young Edgar Allan Poe. But a powerful ring of conspirators doesn't want the secret known. And they're ready to kill anyone who gets in their way.
New Orleans, 1838. Living in antebellum New Orleans as a free man of color, Benjamin January has always taken whatever work he could find. But when he suddenly loses his job playing piano at extravagant parties, he finds himself taking on an entirely new-and exceedingly dangerous-enterprise. Sugar planter Henri Viellard has hired Benjamin to travel with him to Washington, DC. Henri's friend, an elderly English mathematician named Selwyn Singletary, was last seen in Washington before he went missing. With Benjamin's help, Henri intends to track him down.
Plunged into a murky world of spies, slave snatchers, and dirty politicians, Benjamin uncovers a coded secret that he attempts to decipher with the help of a young Edgar Allan Poe. But a powerful ring of conspirators doesn't want the secret known. And they're ready to kill anyone who gets in their way.
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Person
Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century. After receiving a master's degree in medieval history, she published The Time of the Dark, the first novel in the Darwath saga, in 1982, establishing herself as an author of serious speculative fiction. Since then she has created several series, including the Windrose Chronicles, Sun-Cross, and Sun Wolf and Starhawk, in addition to writing for the Star Wars and Star Trek universes.
Besides fantasy, Hambly has won acclaim for the James Asher vampire series, which won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989, and the Benjamin January mystery series, featuring a brilliant African-American surgeon in antebellum New Orleans. She lives in Los Angeles.
