The Fatal Flame
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
'Spectacular' Gillian Flynn. THE FATAL FLAME is the stunning third novel in Lyndsay Faye's Edgar Award-nominated series, for fans of Andrew Taylor and Antonia Hodgson's The Devil in the Marshalsea.
A scarred barman turned copper star, the birth of the NYPD, gangs, murder, brothels and bedlam in the dark underworld of nineteenth-century New York.
Timothy Wilde - copper star, tough with a warm heart, learning his craft as a detective.
Valentine Wilde - Timothy's gregarious, glamorous, depraved rogue of a brother.
Mercy Underhill - The intelligent, creative but unstable love of Timothy's life.
Silky Marsh - The beautiful brothel owner whose scheming knows no bounds.
Against the gritty backdrop of the notorious Five Points in 1848, Timothy Wilde is drawn yet again into a disturbing mystery, leading him to the heart of the Bowery girls, the original 'factory girls' in downtown Manhattan.
Someone is starting fires on the streets of New York and Timothy has to unravel a knot of revenge, murder and blackmail if he's to find out who is behind it all and stop them before the whole city goes up in flames...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A serial arsonist terrorizes New York City in Edgar-finalist Faye's superior third historical featuring Timothy Wilde (after 2013's Seven for a Secret). In the spring of 1848, Robert Symmes, a Tammany Hall politician, meets with Wilde, one of the city's police officers known as copper stars, and Wilde's police-captain brother, Valentine, at the Queen Mab, a Manhattan brothel. Symmes needs their help. An advocate for more humane treatment of the city's female workers has thrown a note through the alderman's window threatening that things will burn if conditions don't improve. One of the slum buildings that Symmes owns is soon gutted by fire. Wilde's investigation is complicated by the reappearance of a lost love and Valentine's decision to oppose Symmes in an upcoming election. As in her previous books, Faye's diligence in researching the period is manifest, and readers will feel transported back to mid-19th-century Manhattan. The whodunit aspect is compelling, but Faye is equally adept in incorporating the women's rights movement of the time and attitudes toward the mentally ill into the story line.
