Prisoner of Midnight by Barbara Hambly

Prisoner of Midnight: A James Asher Vampire Novel by Barbara Hambly 
--- 247 pages

March 1917: In the eighth novel in this series (that began in 1988 with Those Who Hunt the Night) 400-year-old vampire Don Simon Ysido has been poisoned by a rogue doctor and smuggled aboard The City of Gold, bound for New York City. The unscrupulous industrialist and war profiteer Spenser Cochran intends to use Don Simon as a weapon against union organizers and anyone else who tries to get in his way.  Don Simon is kept locked in a silver-lined coffin and must obey his captor in order to receive injections of the antidote that holds the excruciating pain at bay.

In despair, Don Simon uses what little power remains to him to send cries for help into the dreams of the only two humans he cares for, Professor James Asher and his wife, Dr. Lydia Asher. James in on assignment for British Intelligence behind enemy lines in eastern Europe, but Lydia is in London. She responds immediately and secures passage on the same ship, determined to prevent Cochran's plans by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, James, on leave in Paris, makes contact with the vampires of Paris to get his hands on the research notes about the poison and the antidote to wire  to Lydia the vital information she needs to combat Cochran's plans.

But as The City of Gold crosses the Atlantic, in ever increasing danger of being torpedoed by German submarines, Lydia is horrified to discover evidence that a second vampire is hiding below decks, attacking and murdering children among the desperate refugees in steerage. Lydia knows she must find this other vampire before Cochran can capture another vampire for his arsenal. Yet she faces an even harder test: for breaking Cochran's hold on Don Simon will not eliminate the threat. The only way to do that is to kill Don Simon herself.

Barbara Hambly is a distinguished and award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror fiction. She is best known for her Benjamin January series of historical mysteries set in antebellum New Orleans, and her World War I historical horror series featuring James and Lydia Asher and Don Simon Ysidro.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from tor.com.

Click HERE to read the review from the Historical Novel Society.

Cold Bayou by Barbara Hambly

Cold Bayou: A Benjamin January Historical Mystery by Barbara Hambly --- 250 pages

The sixteenth novel in Hambly's evocative mystery series set in antebellum New Orleans and following the adventures of Benjamin Janvier or January, a free man of color navigating the dangerous intersections of old French Creole society and the influx of rough and ready American frontiersmen.

Soon enough Benjamin January finds many reason to regret that he has agreed to play at the wedding of wealthy and eccentric old Creole landowner Veryl St-Chinian to Irish barmaid Ellie Trask, fifty years his junior and saddled with a notorious past and a conniving uncle. Veryl's family are furious; not just the white family but the "crocodile eggs" too --- the free colored mistresses and their children who are acknowledged in private but not in public. As the wedding guests gather at the isolated plantation of Cold Bayou where the marriage is to take place, the body of Ellie's slave, Valla, is discovered in the woods nearby and January himself is accused of the crime.

There's something for everyone here: an intricately plotted murder mystery; a dissection of the horrors perpetuated by America's original sin of racism, both white on black racism and even more invidious black on black racism; and a portrait of the complex ties that both blight and bond a family.

Barbara Hambly writes all kinds of fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, and historical fiction. Whatever the genre, her books are distinguished by meticulous research, attention to detail, and compelling characters. This is a series I recommend starting at the beginning and reading in sequence, as the stories build on each other. Reading Hambly is like virtual reality without the glasses: a total immersion experience. I usually wait for a Saturday when I have nothing else scheduled, because I know once I start I will not stop until I finish the book.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read the review from The Fish Shelf Blog.

Pale Guardian by Barbara Hambly

Pale Guardian: A James Asher Vampire Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 248 pages.

Barbara Hambly is a prolific author of fantasy, horror, historical and mystery fiction.  Although I'm not generally a fan of horror fiction, her James Asher series caught my interest from the first book, Those Who Hunt the Night, and continues to enthrall with this, the seventh book in the series.

The series began at the turn of the previous century, featuring James Asher, an Oxford philologist who has a second, top secret career as an agent provocateur  for the British Secret Service; and his wife Lydia, an early feminist who horrifies her wealthy, aristocratic family by pursuing a medical degree and an interest in researching glandular and blood disorders.

Pale Guardian picks up where the last book, Darkness on His Bones  left off. World War I has begun. James is convalescing in England from the pneumonia that nearly killed him, and Lydia is a volunteer working at a medical station on the front lines in France. The vampire Don Simon Ysidro, disguised as a British colonel on special assignment, is fulfilling his promise to watch over Lydia's safety.

Every vampire in Europe is haunting the battlefields and casualty tents; but Lydia soon discovers that even worse creatures called revenants have appeared, a contagion that infects anyone who is exposed to their blood. Revenants attack and devour both the living and the Undead. They have a kind of hive mind and hunt in packs. And there are those on both sides of the battle who think they can control the creatures and use them as weapons to destroy their enemies.

Asher and Lydia must make a devil's bargain with the vampires to prevent this madness. Don Simon as always is their ally. The World War I setting creates a chilling tale of the evil that men do in pursuit of victory at any cost.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Murder in July by Barbara Hambly

Murder in July: A Benjamin January Historical Mystery by Barbara Hambly ---250 pages

When the body of visiting Englishman Henry Brooke, of dubious antecedents, is found floating in New Orleans' New Basin Canal, and the British Consul, Sir John Oldmixton, offers Benjamin January $100 plus expenses incurred to recover some "personal papers" that were in the possession of the deceased, Ben's first instinctive reaction is to have nothing to do with the matter.  As a free black man in 1839 New Orleans, getting mixed up in the murky affairs of a white man and a Englishman at that, was not something he wanted to touch with a barge pole,  Not to mention that he and his wife Rose, about to deliver their second child, had just spent three years digging themselves out of the financial disaster of the bank crash of 1836, and are about to reopen Rose's school.

But Ben finds himself drawn into this brangle in spite of his best efforts, when a young placeé, Jacquette Filoux, a friend of his sister Olympe, is arrested for Brooke's murder. The murder weapon, a so-called "muff pistol," reminds Ben forcibly of an unsolved murder in Paris nine years before, and another young woman, unjustly accused, who went to the guillotine when the one man who could have testified to her innocence disappeared.  

When Ben begins to suspect that Henry Brooke could be that same man, then known as Gerry O'Dwyer, he realizes that the earlier murder could be connected to this second killing. And that many innocent lives could be lost, if he cannot unravel this mystery before time runs out.

Another meticulously researched and cleverly plotted historical mystery from Barbara Hambly. 

Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly

Drinking Guard: The New Benjamin January Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 248 pages

Another impossible-to-put-down historical mystery, number 14 in the Benjamin January series, by Barbara Hambly, featuring a free man of color in antebellum New Orleans.

In the sweltering summer of 1839, Ben and his wife Rose are still trying to recover from the bank crash precipitated by President Andrew Jackson in 1837. Ben has taken a job with a traveling minstrel show for $10 a week. He is accompanied by his friend and fellow musician Hannibal Sefton. Since Hannibal is white, with suitably forged papers, he can pose as Ben's owner on their travels. When $10 a week can support a family, and a prime field hand sells for $1500 on the auction block, the pretense that Hannibal is his master is Ben's only protection from the slave trade.

Just as the traveling show is quitting Natchez, Ben receives a message asking for help. Up river at Vicksburg, a black barber named Rex Ballou and a white preacher named Ezekias Drummond have partnered to help escaping slaves flee north on the Underground Railroad.  Now, this "station" on the railroad could be exposed because Rex Ballou has been shot when a roving patrol stumbled on a "cargo" of slaves he was leading to the next station. If Ballou's cover is blown, everyone involved will come under suspicion and be subject to bloody reprisals. He needs a doctor to help him get on his feet again quickly.

Then Ezekias Drummond is murdered, and Jubal Cain, the man secretly responsible for coordinating the whole railroad in Mississippi, is framed by a prominent local planter who thinks Cain is having an affair with his wife.  As Ben tries to sort through all the lies and deceptions to discover the even more terrible truth he is beginning to suspect, Hannibal is attacked. Without his "owner" to protect him, Ben must flee for his life into the trackless swamp land. Unless he can ensure Hannibal's survival and solve the murder, Ben knows he will never make it home to New Orleans and Rose.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Darkness On His Bones: A James Asher Vampire Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 250 pages

July 1914: Lydia Asher receives a cable from the British Embassy in Paris. “James Asher met with accident last night stop critical condition Hospital Saint Antoine stop.”

Lydia finds Paris on the verge of panic. Archduke Francis Ferdinand has been assassinated, the city is rife with rumors of a German invasion. Hospitals are barely staffed, medicines unavailable, in the rush to prepare for war. No one seems to know why James was in the bell tower of the ancient church of St. Clare or how he fell --- or why his throat and arms are punctured with multiple wounds --- but Lydia can't wait for him to wake from his coma and explain. She knows about James' top secret work for British Intelligence. She wastes no time sending for the one man who can help, the only man who will help: the vampire Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro.

While Lydia retraces James' footsteps during the day, Don Simon stands guard at his bedside by night, and together they piece together the puzzle of his actions prior to his accident.

Meanwhile the unconscious James experiences strange and disturbing dreams. Old memories are entangled with recollections of recent danger.  Past betrayals appear to be repeating themselves. The German invaders are exploiting rivalries among the vampires of Paris, searching for a powerful talisman that will allow them to use the vampires to win dominion.  Don Simon knows how it almost happened before. Now it is happening again. The hunt for the Facinum, the talisman of mastery, and the Chapel of Bones. Whoever controls them will be Master of All.

The sixth book in the James Asher Vampire Series is another riveting tale from Hambly.  Read them in order starting with Those Who Hunt the Night for the maximum enjoyment.

Click HERE to read the review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Intravenous Magazine.com.

Crimson Angel by Barbara Hambly

Crimson Angel: A Benjamin January Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 247 pages

The latest in Hambly's historical mystery series featuring Benjamin January, a free man of color struggling to earn a living for his family in antebellum New Orleans, is uncompromising in its portrayal of the rank injustice, hypocrisy and brutality that was entrenched in law and custom in early America. It was a time when slaves and females were legally chattel, to be disposed of entirely at the will of their masters or male guardians. With few exceptions, neither a slave nor a woman, no matter how grossly mistreated, could expect anyone to help them escape their abusers.

The mystery involves Ben, his wife Rose, and their friend the white fiddler Hannibal Sefton, in a desperate flight from New Orleans to Cuba to the island of Sante Domingue and the free black Republic of Haiti. They are searching for a legendary family treasure left behind when Rose's French great-grandfather fled the violent slave revolt of 1791 --- and for proof of a terrible family secret associated with the treasure that --- almost fifty years later --- has put Rose and Ben in peril of their lives.  

Hambly is an excellent writer and her Benjamin January novels expose parts of the American experience that are too often glossed over, and bring them vividly and unforgettably to life.

Click HERE and HERE for reviews of Crimson Angel.

The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly

The Kindred of Darkness: A James Asher Vampire Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 248 pages

This is just the fifth book in Hambly's vampire series; she started about twenty years ago with Those Who Hunt the Night. After the first two books there was a long hiatus before she picked up the series again.

For those who like their vampires in the classic tradition (as opposed to those contemporary teen angst vamps) Hambly writes the kind of horror that sends shivers down your spine and keeps you awake in the dark.

Oxford don James Asher is a philologist and folklorist with an extensive knowledge (painfully acquired) of the legend and lore of the Undead. His wife Lydia forsook her gilded cage as the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family to study medicine. The two of them have narrowly survived dangerous encounters with vampires in London, Europe, Russia and China, but after the birth of their daughter Miranda, they promised each other such adventures were behind them.

Until the night the Master Vampire of London kidnaps Miranda and her nursemaid to force Lydia and James into helping him discover the lair of a renegade vampire who is challenging the Master for control of the London Nest.

With the lives of their daughter and the innocent maid at stake, Lydia searches frantically for evidence that will reveal the intruder vampire's hiding places. At the same time she must act her part in her young cousin's formal debut into London high society, so that no one suspects she and James are trying to discover what lies behind this rivalry for control of the London vampires --- and locate where Miranda and the maid are being held captive.

James learns that an ancient book, The Kindred of the Dead, said to describe methods for destroying vampires, is at the heart of the struggle between the Master and his rival. Meanwhile Lydia, in desperation, has summoned the assistance of Don Simon Ysidro, the vampire who first drew the Ashers into the fell world of the Undead --- where nothing and no one is who or what it appears to be and above all, where no human in his right mind should trust the word of a vampire.

Hambly writes a great story, and the James Asher novels (as well as all her other novels, encompassing historical fiction, mysteries and fantasy) are highly recommended.

Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly

Good Man Friday: A Benjamin January Novel by Barbara Hambly --- 250 pages

The latest in Hambly's Benjamin January series of historical mysteries set in New Orleans between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War lives up to the high standard set by its predecessors.

A first rate mystery about a man gone missing and presumed dead in Washington City, as it was then known. Henri Viellard, the protector of January's beautiful half-sister Dominique, according to the French Creole "custom of the country" in New Orleans, hires January to accompany himself and his wife Chloe to Washington City to search for Selwyn Singletary, an eccentric Englishman whom they hold in high regard. Although they have never met, Chloe has been corresponding with Mr. Singletary for many years on subjects mathematical.

Hambly's historical acumen adds fascinating embellishments to the basic plot. Such luminaries as John Quincy Adams and Edgar Allan Poe appear in supporting roles, along with vivid vignettes of Capitol Hill, Rock Creek, Georgetown and other locales, and stark renderings of the seamier side of early America, including slave traders, grave robbing, insame asylums, and bawdy houses. Plus, Hambly incorporates an early version of baseball into her narrative, and makes a complex mathemantical cipher the crucial element in solving the mystery.

Highly recommended for those who like their mysteries challenging, their history accurate, and their characters intriguing.

The Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly

The Magistrates of Hell (James Asher Vampire Series) by Barbara Hambly --- 244 pages

The fourth and latest novel in Hambly's vampire series featuring Jame Asher (late of His Majesty's Intelligence Service), his formidable young wife Lydia, and their strange alliance with the five-hundred-year-old vampire Don Simon Ysidro.

It is October 1912 and the Ashers, with their infant daughter and servants, have journeyed to the ancient capital Peking, in the newborn Republic of China, at the behest of Jamie's old friend and mentor, Dr. Solomon Karlebach, to investigate the rumored presence of the mindless Undead known as the Others, in an old abandoned mine is the hills west of the city.

The Ashers arrive to discover that Don Simon has anticipated them and is already in Peking, trying to make common cause with the vampires of the city. For even vampires fear the Others, who cannot be controlled, and whose blood infects both the living and the Undead on contact.

Jamie and Lydia find themselves caught in a web of conflicting forces: between Ysidro and Karlebach,  between erstwhile enemies (the Japanese, the Germans) and devious friends (the British), between Chinese gangs, the corrupt Republic, the Communist insurgents, and the foreign Powers.. In the increasingly chaotic city, everyone is maneuvering for advantage in a game in which the only rule is to win at any cost.

And somewhere in the labyrinth of streets and alleys a great deal of power is riding on a very dangerous game indeed, involving vampires who have become the Magistrates of Hell, and a plot to sell the services of the mindless Undead as weapons of war.

Hambly has brewed another potent batch of history and the supernatural.

Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly

Blood Maidens (James Asher Vampire Series) by Barbara Hambly --- 244 pages.

After a hiatus of too many years, Hambly has finally returned to her vampire series with a third volume following Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling with the Dead. 

It's 1911 and all Europe is bracing itself for the fury of the war that is waiting to engulf the world. James Asher, professor of folklore and old languages at Oxford University, and his intelligent young wife Lydia, are just getting over the private grief of Lydia's recent miscarriage. Asher would like to forget that he was once also a secret agent in the British intelligence service (the Department) until his marriage --- and disillusionment --- led him to resign. But he cannot so easily escape his connection with Don Simon Ysidro, the 500-year-old vampire who was once his adversary, then his (unwilling) ally, Lydia's protector, and now their uneasy partner once again.

For Don Simon has received a warning from an old acquaintance in St. Petersburg that the German Kaiser is seeking to recruit vampires to his service in the coming war. The Ashers and Don Simon travel to St. Petersburg to find Don Simon's informant vanished, revolution threatening, and disquieting evidence that a German scientist has found a way to allow vampires to walk unscathed in the daylight. In a world turned upside down, Asher must decide what constitutes the ultimate betrayal.

Hambly expertly combines history and horror in a mesmerizing tale.