Deadly Pedigree

He's at his desk one afternoon trying to decide how to pad his latest job when an elderly man wheezes into the office. He's a concentration camp survivor and wants Nick to trace an ancestor of his that emigrated from Europe to Louisiana in 1840. Although all the client gives him is his ancestor's last name, Nick takes the job and begins his research.

A few days later, Nick is visited by the wealthy owner of Artemis Holdings, and she has a surprising counteroffer for him. She claims that Nick's client is a bitter, crazed old man who is out to ruin her by revealing that her supposedly illustrious family started out as poor Jewish emigrés--it's actually her ancestor that Nick's been hired to trace. She offers Nick $50,000 to steal all references to her ancestors and turn them over to her. Faced with a stack of overdue bills, Nick agrees, but his conscience soon starts to gnaw at him. When he finds his elderly client murdered, Nick must decide between playing it safe and taking a chance to expose old wrongs.

One of the best things about being a mystery reviewer is that I occasionally get to learn about cool stuff along with the mystery, and the genealogy in this book is a prime example of cool stuff. Nick is shown doing his research in libraries, court houses and graveyards, and there are enough details given that it's practically a primer on how to start genealogical research. It's never dry or boring, though, as Nick's excitement for the hunt makes the search for his client's ancestors as much of a gripping mystery as the murder itself.

Nick is a hard character to like--he's very self-centered and his morals are questionable. He grows somewhat during the course of the book, but he doesn't completely abandon his selfish tendencies, which makes him very realistic. At the beginning Nick hires an energetic, wheelchair-bound college student as an assistant, but her introduction is all too brief. I would have liked more time with this dynamic character. An old diary written in the 1870s reveals another non-traditional character. The diary was started in 1869 by an ambitious mulatto man who opened a barber shop in Natchitoches, and he's related to the family Nick's been hired to trace.

In spite of the difficulties of being a mulatto in the 1800s, the barber is an honorable man who strives to do right, even when confronted with the hatred of his all-white half-brother. The diarist's sense of morality is what ultimately causes Nick to do the right thing.

Deadly Pedigree
by Jimmy Fox
Top Publications, 2001
267 pages, $14.95
ISBN 1-9299760-8-9
Nick Herald series #1

Business is slow and the bills are piling up. Nick is almost relieved when new business comes his way in the person of Max Corban, survivor of a World War II Jewish concentration camp. He wants Nick to find out what happened to a cousin of his grandmother's who came to Louisiana from Europe. All Max remembers is the last name--Balazar.

In the meanwhile, Professors Una Kern, Nick's former lover, and Dion Rambus, former colleague, pressures Nick into hiring an assistant. Four years previously, both Una and Dion supported Nick during the fracas at Freret University that resulted in Nick's ejection from the faculty under a cloudy unsubstantiated accusation of plagiarism. Harrieta "Hawty" Latimer is a promising young college student, majoring in English and computer science. Her two-year scholarship has run out and she needs desperately to find a way to fund the remaining part of her education. Hawty sails the Internet as well as she handles her state-of-the-art wheelchair to which she is confined. She takes charge of Nick's office and workload, leaving Nick to concentrate on locating Balazars for Max Corban.

Enter Natalie Arminger, owner of his run-down office building in downtown New Orleans as well as Artemis Holdings, a huge mutual funds and holding company conglomerate with lots of philanthropic ties. Natalie reveals to Nick that Max Corban has hired Nick, not to find information on his family, but to locate dirt on her family--Balazar is actually Natalie's ancestor. According to Natlaie, Max lost out financially investing in Artemis Holdings and he wants revenge. Natalie offers Nick $50,000 plus expenses to stop working for Max and to locate and erase her Balazar link. With bills and a new assistant to be paid for, Nick reluctantly accepts her offer. Shortly after, Nick finds Max Corban dead.

With pangs of remorse, guilt and unease, Nick makes his way to Natchitoches, Louisiana in his search for any records connected to Ivanhoe Balzar, a mulatto and possible ancestor of Natalie Arminger. In Natchitoches, Nick starts to "collect" all records pertaining to the Balzars, including Hyam Balazar's will and Hyam's son Ivanhoe's diary, a fount of information. Nick also meets the present-day Balzars--Erasmus III, the great great grandson of Ivanhoe, and his wife Dora, son Shelvin, and grandfather Twice.

Then, Nick receives mailed documents from the now-dead Max Corban and starts to realize that his own life may be in peril despite of, and maybe resulting from, his growing love affair with Natalie's daughter, Zola. He resolves to make right the wrongs done to Balzars, past and present, and those done to Max but how to do that and stay alive becomes Nick's next problem to be solved. For he is being threatened--of that he is almost certain. How far will a person go to hide the past from the present?

Whether or not you like genealogy, you can’t help but find Nick's methods ingenious, logical, and interesting. Yes, his morals are a bit shaky at times but in the end he does figure out what is right for him and the people around him. His search for the Balazars/Balzars is a meandering journey through New Orleans and Natchitoches, the type of story that you can read leisurely and comfortably at your own pace.

The author Jimmy Fox is from Alexandria, Louisiana. He studies in the field of family history for both personal reasons and to help make his mysteries as authentic as possible. His next book in the series, Lineages & Lies, will be released in 2002. For more information, visit Mr. Fox’s website. Terry Frey Weingart

National Genealogical Society Quarterly
Volume 90, No. 1, March 2002; p. 76
A review by Kathleen W. Hinckley,
Certified Genealogical Record Specialist, Private Investigator

Deadly Pedigree: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery
By Jimmy Fox
Published by Top Publications;100 Independence Parkway no. 311-349; Plano, Texas 75251; 2001. 267 pp.
ISBN 1-929976-08-9. Softback. $14.95.

"Nick Herald, Ph.D., CG" pulls out his Swiss Army knife in a Louisiana courthouse and cuts fragile old pages out of ledgers and court minute books. "His fourteen excisions were masterful and would certainly be the envy of any surgeon. Hyam Balazar and his descendants didn't feel a thing as Nick separated them," Fox writes (p. 113).

The antics of Fox's fictional character continue to disgrace professional genealogy in this murder mystery set in modern New Orleans. Fox portrays his "Certified Genealogist" as a dubiously charming scoundrel who pads his bills on purpose, accepts commissions to steal records from courthouses and libraries, and sets fire to a works-in-progress Bible index after stealing the original records. This is not a murder mystery--it is a horror story.

Private detectives and police investigators are often characterized as shady individuals in mysteries, but Jimmy Fox took a giant leap from that standard when he developed the character of "Nick Herald, Ph.D., CG." Herald's unethical behavior is so routine throughout Deadly Pedigree as to make one wonder whether the author is purposefully mocking the field. Genealogists are known for their use of cemetery records to solve genealogical mysteries, but Nick Herald digs too deeply when he opens a casket to remove a sealed jar with documents he needs to solve his case.

Curiously, Fox demonstrates an excellent understanding of the players in the genealogical field. He sprinkles his story with references to the American Society of Genealogists, the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Board for Certification of Genealogists, and the Family History Library. He even portrays Herald as a reader of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. He describes census records correctly and touts the value of city directories, deeds, military files, passenger arrival manifests, tax rolls, and vital records.

Deadly Pedigree is a story of murder, greed, and family skeletons. You will not stay up nights reading it, but you may want to get to the end of the book to figure out how "Nick Herald, Ph.D., CG" reforms his ways and finds a public archives for all the records he stole.