History and Mystery Reads

Rating: 6/10

• Accuracy: Lively on antebellum New Orleans, with its Creole society, duelling codes and voodoo culture, though the treatment of slavery is shallow.
• Plot: In 1858, a death linked to rumours of voodoo draws in a young visitor and the lawyer and senator Judah P. Benjamin, who acts as detective.
• Clues: Carr’s familiar misdirection around apparently supernatural events.
• Reveal: Rational and tidy, though less ingenious than his best.

In New Orleans in 1858, a series of strange events and a death are linked to rumours of voodoo and the mysterious figure of Papa Là-Bas. A young man caught up in the affair enlists the help of Judah P. Benjamin, a brilliant lawyer and senator from Louisiana who would later serve in the Confederate cabinet.

Carr clearly enjoyed the setting. New Orleans is portrayed with colour and affection: grand houses, quadroon balls, duelling, and the fear and fascination surrounding voodoo. Benjamin is an interesting choice of detective, clever and urbane.

The problem is that the city’s glamour is presented with little awareness of slavery. Enslaved people appear mainly as background or as figures of superstition, and Benjamin’s own later role in the Confederacy is not examined.

As a mystery, the book uses Carr’s usual technique of apparently supernatural events rationally explained. It works, but it is not among his most ingenious puzzles. The romance is formulaic.

The 6 reflects an atmospheric but dated late Carr novel. It shows his continuing inventiveness with setting, and his limits as a historical novelist.