THE GODS OF GOTHAM
By Lyndsay Faye
Berkley
Books
427 pages
One of the joys of reading any Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock
Holmes mystery is their settings. It is
unlikely Doyle’s purpose was ever to offer an historical travelogue but
nonetheless we are given such in each and every tale. Whereas Lyndsay Faye, following in Doyle’s
footsteps, which she does incredibly well in “The Gods of Gotham,” is decidedly
intent on showing us the astounding world of New York City in the nineteenth
century. The burgeoning metropolis on
the Hudson is
as much a character in this epic saga as its struggling inhabitants battling to
eke out a living from day to day against overwhelming odds.
Timothy Wilde and his older brother, Valentine, are the
orphaned sons of two Irish immigrants.
Val works as a firefighter and is active in the Irish Democratic Party
while Tim manages a bar and is saving his money to propose to Miss Mercy Underhill, the daughter of a protestant
minister he has grown up loving. When a
horrible fire destroys both his business establishment and his apartment
building, Tim is suddenly destitute without a penny to his name. Without conferring with him, Val enlists them
both into the newly formed New York Police Department being assembled by Judge
George Washington Matsell. Like all good
historical novels, fiction and fact have to work together smoothly and the
birth of the New York Police is deftly handled here as it depicts the aversion
to its creation by New Yorkers who saw it as just another gang in a city
riddled with such.
Tim begrudgingly accepts his “copper star” until something
better can come along. Then one night he
bumps into a runaway child prostitute covered in blood. It is she who tells him of a mysterious
black-cloaked man responsible for the murder and mutilation of over a dozen
children; all of them employed at various brothels throughout the city. All of which leads to the discovery of a
gruesome gravesite in the woods north of Twenty-third Street. As these events come to light, Matsell sees
in Tim a moral stubbornness in his desire to pursue the case while at the same
time exhibiting a keen mind for puzzle-solving; the type of skills required in
this post-crime situation. Tim, much to
his own surprise, is becoming a detective; a role that will lead him down the
dark, depraved alleys of the human psyche.
“The Gods of Gotham,” is a truly remarkable writing
achievement. It would not surprise this reviewer if Lyndsay Faye did not have a
working time-machine hidden in her New
York apartment as the scenes she describes are so
brilliantly real. In every sense they transport the reader back to a world
that, until now, only existed in dusty museums.
She brings that past to life and in doing so enriches us all.
