GOOD MAN FRIDAY

Barbara Hambly's twelfth Benjamin January novel starts out in New Orleans in 1838. Kirsten Potter's performance highlights Hambly's meticulous historical research and gives immediacy to the period details. January, a free man of color who is a trained surgeon and a musician, loses his job after he helps a dying "fighting slave." To feed his family, January agrees to help planter Henri Viellard find a missing friend. Potter handles the horrors and brutality of a world of grave robbers and slave stealers with understated intensity. She gives the well-drawn characters individual personalities, including a young Edgar Allan Poe and Ganymede Tyler, the "good man Friday" of the title. January's experiences are fraught with violence, ferocity, and peril, and Potter makes them all feel real. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2013]