The Lucifer Contract
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of The Dutchman and The House on Mulberry Street comes another darkly thrilling mystery rooted in New York's historic past.
In November 1864, Manhattan mirrors the tumult of the Civil War. Bowery toughs rub shoulders with fashionable theatergoers, crippled veterans beg on the streets, and runaway slaves huddle in Underground Railroad safe houses. Last year's Draft Riots tore the city apart; many fear another uprising on Election Day.
But a far greater threat hangs, unseen, over New York. Eight men from Kentucky—one barely old enough to shave—have signed a Confederate blood pact. Its code name is Lucifer; its mission is to burn this Yankee town to the ground. Already, one of the men, cutting a Union spy's throat, has left a Lucifer matchstick clenched between the unfortunate's teeth.
Infiltrating the city, the conspirators draw into their orbit many an unsuspecting citizen—plus a handful who glimpse something amiss. One of these is Pete Tonneman, who can't resist a glass of whiskey or a good story. When barmaid Meg Clancy reports an overheard conversation, Pete finds himself on the scent of a rumored plot and a string of seemingly random corpses—each dispatched with a slashed throat and marked with a matchstick between the teeth. It is a trail that forks often, and dangerously, for Pete and his informants, such as stagestruck Meg, who mingles with theater folk, including the notorious rake John Wilkes Booth; flamboyant, Madonna-faced prostitute Claudia Albert; and Patrick Duff, the Union veteran who will cross paths again with the Rebel devil who half blinded him in battle. Spurred by General Sherman's burning of Atlanta, the Lucifer plot moves relentlessly toward its target. And joining his Tonneman relatives' police expertise with his own journalist's savvy, Pete must pick apart the tangle of politics and greed, firebrand insanity and cold-blooded butchery, that sweeps the city toward an unimaginable inferno.
Stamped with Maan Meyers's vivid authenticity and novelistic flair, The Lucifer Contract is an unforgettable work of history and intrigue, romance, vengeance, and murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like a diligent team of archeologists and anthropologists, Annette and Martin Meyers continue mining the rich history of New York City and the fortunes and escapades of their fictional Tonneman family. Proceeding from New Amsterdam in 1664 (The Dutchman), five previous books have brought us 200 years forward to 1864 and a New York bitterly divided during the Civil War. Although it seems clear that the Confederacy is losing the war, a team of Southerners (mostly Kentuckians and mostly veterans of Morgan's Raiders) has come to New York determined to burn the city to the ground. The novel's brief segments shift focus among a large number of characters. While this technique prevents the story from developing much narrative force, it is effective in presenting a cross section of the attitudes, beliefs and prejudices of the time. Young Peter Tonneman, a somewhat dissolute journalist, emerges as the newest member of the clan to make his mark in the city as he catches wind of the arsonists' plan and does his best to ferret out the secrets of the plotters. The plot is an open secret dismissed by many as a rumor designed to help Lincoln's Republicans in Democratic New York come election day. A wealth of surprising and entertaining historical tidbits are woven into the story, and the city comes alive in all its glorious, noisy mid-19th century diversity.
