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New York City at the end of 1906 is riveted by the trial of anarchist Al Drayson, who set off a dynamite bomb, hoping to target Andrew Carnegie. Instead, he killed four innocent passersby, including a child. So Detective Simon Ziele – who has returned to live in New York City from upstate Dobson – is in the right place at the right time when the trial judge in the Drayson case is murdered at home. Judge Hugo Jackson was a friend of criminologist Alistair Sinclair, with whom Ziele worked in the previous two books. So Sinclair pulls some strings, and Ziele is soon on the case, even though it's not in his precinct. Soon after they begin investigating, Sinclair himself disappears, and Ziele is left to try to solve the case – and two ensuing murders – with help from his former partner, Capt. Declan Mulvaney, and Sinclair's daughter-in-law, Isabella. The case also becomes personal. One of the prime suspects is known to Ziele: Jonathan Strupp, a leader of the anarchists, would have been Ziele's brother-in-law had the detective's fiancée, Hannah, not died in a ferry accident. Pintoff writes a solid mystery, steeped in history that brings the story to life. The story moves quickly, taking us through police precincts, the Tombs (jail), Chinatown and even the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, a history lesson in Gilded Age New York. But to be readable, a historical mystery also needs a good plot, and Pintoff provides one, giving us a solid police procedural with plenty of plot twists. Her characters are also engaging, and the relationship between Ziele and Sinclair, never one built on trust, continues to strain in this book. We get the feeling there are depths to these two characters still to be explored – which will hopefully result in more books in this fine series. § Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, June 2011
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