Words leave imprints in your mind like footprints in the sand...
1845 – Step back in time to a real pivotal moment in NYC – the fledging police force is formed and one policeman is finding it tough… very atmospheric and this novel brings together the sights, sounds and also smells of the city at that time.
1845 is a pivotal time in New York city.
For this is the year of two events – New York City forms its first police force and the great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly separate and distinct events will merge to combine a period of intense change and of course danger…
Timothy Wilde is a barman but is persuaded to join the burgeoning police force. One night as he patrols the Sixth Ward-at the border of Five Points, the world’s most notorious slum, he comes across a young girl of around 10 years old . . . covered head to toe in blood.
Not wanting to take her to the orphanage, he takes her home where she starts to tell him of horrible things happening in the forest, north of 23rd Street. Things such as bodies buried there.
Now this new and reluctant copper must decide what to do next…
This is a great historical gritty drama based on two very real events and the start of the NY police force. Absolutely fascinating and with an introduction to the Flash vernacular of criminals of the time, a real insight into the period and setting of 19th Century NYC. Stunning research and an amazing sense of historical detail and intrigue.
New York is of course lawless in 1845 and what with the potato famine in Ireland sending loads of immigrants to the lawless city, the new police force is finding it hard to cope.
Not to suggest the irish are responsible for all the crime of course but it shows how the dynamics of the new inhabitants and the old, and that of the police are fraught with difficulty.
Ahh think you know New York?
You haven’t seen this side of things the city that never sleeps. For it might not sleep but that doesn’t mean that the criminals have a rest or the worse of human kind come crawling out on the streets.
Do you like the lights of Broadway? Well you may see it in a different light here –
The two most iconic sites in the novel are the Five Points and the tombs – the tombs was the name for the prison and police station at the time and it was situated in the Five points area of the city – a notorious slum full of vice.
Susan:
This was a rollicking and thrilling ride back to the dirt and grime of 19th Century New York. Such a fascinating city at the best of times but having never had the chance to visit it in this way before, I was enthralled and immediately caught in its grabbling, spindly fingers.
It made me shiver, look over my shoulder at times and always scrunch up my nose at the smells and sights described in the book – and there are lots of them! – Stray dogs, swarms of immigrants, traders doing deals down on the docks, rats running everywhere and the policeman taking their first tentative steps.Oh a a great fire which destroys a lot of the land.
Great dynamic between the policeman and his brother Valentine and shades of Sherlock Holmes I would say which added to the timeless feel of the whole book.
The Flash lexicon was the language that George Matsell first sat down to log as he believed that keeping an account – a dictionary of the language used on the streets could be useful for the new police force in fighting crime. A lot of this involved gallows humour such as ‘ being put to bed with a shovel = to be buried’
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