When two women disappear from the household of Huseyin Pasha, a visiting Ottoman official, no runaway notices are posted. After a witness claims to have seen him throw their bodies from a window, racial and religious prejudice make the foreigner an immediately convincing murder suspect.
Benjamin January knows Huseyin from Paris and doubts the accusation. His search for the missing women exposes the similarities and differences between slavery, concubinage and domestic dependence in New Orleans, while the people exploiting the scandal attempt to ensure that neither the women nor the truth can be recovered.
The investigation is complicated by the legal status of the missing women. Their disappearance is not treated with the urgency that would accompany respectable white citizens, allowing rumour about Huseyin to replace proper inquiry. January’s search exposes how race, gender and servitude determine whose testimony is believed and whose absence can be ignored in antebellum New Orleans.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
24 books
Tracy Chevalier
9 books