The Dead Cry Justice
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Publisher Description
For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America’s 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries…
Heiress-turned-sleuth Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter step out of the elite society of Gilded Age New York as they venture into the city’s crime ridden streets and most dangerous neighborhoods to search for two missing children . . .
THE DEAD CRY JUSTICE
May 1890: As NYU Law School finally agrees to admit female law students, Judge MacKenzie’s daughter Prudence weighs her choices carefully. Chief among her concerns is how her decision would affect the Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law agency and her professional and personal relationship with the partner who is currently recuperating from a near fatal shooting.
But an even more pressing issue presents itself in the form of a street urchin, whose act of petty theft inadvertently leads Prudence to a badly beaten girl he is protecting. Fearing for the girl’s life, Prudence rushes her to the Friends Refuge for the Sick Poor, run by the compassionate Charity Sloan. When the boy and girl slip out of their care and run away, Prudence suspects they are fleeing a dangerous predator and is desperate to find them.
Aided by the photographer and social reformer Jacob Riis and the famous journalist Nellie Bly, Prudence and Geoffrey scour the tenements and brothels of Five Points. Their only clue is a mysterious doll with an odd resemblance to the missing girl. But as the destitute orphans they encounter whisper the nickname of the killer who stalks them—Il diavolo—Prudence and Geoffrey must race against time to find the missing children before their merciless enemies do . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1890, Simpson's able sixth Gilded Age mystery (after 2020's Death, Diamonds and Deception) finds Prudence MacKenzie, a private inquiry agent who's considering joining New York University law school's first class to allow women students, sitting in Washington Square Park. When a street urchin runs away with her bag lunch, Prudence follows him into the cellar of a nearby building, where she finds him guarding a teenage girl, possibly his sister, who has been beaten nearly comatose. The girl's eyelashes and eyebrows have been replaced with tattoos, her skin is bleached artificially white, and she has been repeatedly raped. Though a Quaker refuge for the poor agrees to care for the children, who are too traumatized to speak, both vanish that night. Prudence and her investigative partner, Geoffrey Hunter, who's recovering from gunshot wounds he suffered in the previous book, discover few convincing clues to their disappearance until a costly, elaborately dressed porcelain doll whose features resemble those of the missing girl is delivered anonymously to Prudence's home. Cameo appearances by the real-life Nellie Bly and Jacob Riis enliven Simpson's intricate, well-researched narrative. Fans of Victoria Thompson and Alyssa Maxwell will be pleased.
