Another reread, but what a good one. There are any number of mysteries placed in historical settings, from ancient Rome to medieval England to rennaisance France and even into imaginary futures (e.g. Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov), but this series is set in New Orleans in the first half of the nineteenth century. Americans are moving into the city and the long-standing Creole culture is beginning to crumble from the weight of its own assumptions. The detective in the series is a musician and surgeon - and colored, not black - black implies full African descent, and colored that the individual in question has some white blood.
Benjamin January, the son of one of New Orleans' placees, the mixed blood mistresses of the traditional Creoles, has returned to New Orleans after a number of years in Paris where he studied and practiced medicine, to find the city greatly changed by the shifting power structure. He finds himself the most convenient suspect in the murder of one of the demimonde and must solve the mystery to save his own life as well as a former piano student of his.
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