By Paul Carrier
Timothy Wilde is content in his job as a barkeep. He’s been saving up for a decade or so, hoping to create a nest egg so he can declare his love for Mercy Underhill, a minister’s daughter whom he has known since childhood and hopes to wed.
But New York in 1845 is not known for its stability. The political infighting between Democrats and Whigs is brutal. The city’s brand-new police force is just getting off the ground. And Gotham is awash in Irish immigrants, whom the Protestant establishment and other nativists despise with a blind passion. The influx is sure to grow now that the Great Famine has struck Ireland, thanks to a blight that has decimated potato crops there.
Still, the native-born Timothy, a thoughtful, tolerant fellow, is optimistic about his future, which he thinks is well charted. Then an explosion creates a firestorm in Manhattan that leaves him badly disfigured, destroys his home and his savings, and forces him to seek out a new career. Or have one thrust upon him.
Timothy’s pugnacious, licentious older brother Valentine, a fireman and Democratic Party stalwart, ropes him into donning the copper star of the New York police, ushering him into a world of brothels, street toughs, abject poverty and rampant bigotry. Timothy is assigned to Manhattan’s notorious Sixth Ward — “hell’s privy pit,” he calls it — which includes the Five Points neighborhood that movie buffs will recall as the setting of Martin Scorsese’s 2002 epic Gangs of New York.
Heading home one night, Timothy literally collides with a terrified 10-year-old Irish girl, Bird Daly, who is dressed in a blood-soaked night shift. An escapee from a brothel that entraps children for pedophiles, Bird regales Timothy with seemingly tale tales about a boy who is about to be murdered, and many other children who already have met a similar fate.
Except that Bird’s claims are not the product of a vivid imagination. Her young friend Liam, newly arrived at the brothel, soon turns up in a trash can, with what looks like a cross carved into his torso. Eventually, Timothy finds himself investigating how some 20 children came to be buried in shallow, unmarked graves. The victims are believed to have been murdered by a mysterious sadist who makes his rounds with his face concealed by a black hood.
Although the police try to keep the deaths under wraps, someone purporting to be the killer writes a series of letters, one of which ends up in a newspaper. The letters claim the writer is an Irish vigilante who is targeting Irish “kinchin mabs” — children who work as prostitutes — to purify the city. Hostility toward the city’s Irish population intensifies when a boy is found crucified inside a Catholic church.
All of which poses serious problems for the Democrats who control city government. The party’s base of support is largely Irish, so a public backlash against the Irish could break the Democrats’ stranglehold on the city, transfer power to the Whigs, and destroy one of the Democratic Party’s most visible accomplishments: the city’s police force.
Timothy’s high-stakes investigation leaves the weary detective frustrated and beleaguered, but he has other problems to contend with as well, including his love-hate relationship with his brother and his deep but unexpressed love for Mercy. Only later does Tim discover that both Valentine and Mercy have dark secrets, and that his investigation is leading him down surprising paths.
In addition to spinning an electrifying tale, Lyndsay Faye convincingly transports readers to the more dubious corners of antebellum New York, thanks in large part to her use of “flash,” 19th-century slang compiled in a dictionary crafted by George W. Matsell, New York’s first police chief. The real-life Matsell is seen working on his dictionary in the novel.
A helpful lexicon in The Gods of Gotham defines the likes of a dead rabbit (a very athletic, rowdy fellow), palaver (to talk), physog (a face), fam grasp (to shake hands) and French cream (brandy).
Faye also does an eye-opening job of conveying the excesses of rabid nativism, particularly when American-born Protestants take aim at Irish immigrants and their Catholicism, which are attacked in the most strident terms. Several chapters of The Gods of Gotham open with short excerpts from actual anti-immigrant periodicals, such as an 1843 publication by the Orange County Protestant Reformation Society which condemns “the unrelenting cruelty” of the pope, “this most insatiable murderer of men.”
Faye’s New York is sordid, but also uplifting at times, not least because of a handsome piece of detective work as Timothy eventually ferrets out the shocking truth. It’s stunningly horrific, but from a storytelling perspective, satisfying as well.
But New York in 1845 is not known for its stability. The political infighting between Democrats and Whigs is brutal. The city’s brand-new police force is just getting off the ground. And Gotham is awash in Irish immigrants, whom the Protestant establishment and other nativists despise with a blind passion. The influx is sure to grow now that the Great Famine has struck Ireland, thanks to a blight that has decimated potato crops there.
Still, the native-born Timothy, a thoughtful, tolerant fellow, is optimistic about his future, which he thinks is well charted. Then an explosion creates a firestorm in Manhattan that leaves him badly disfigured, destroys his home and his savings, and forces him to seek out a new career. Or have one thrust upon him.
Timothy’s pugnacious, licentious older brother Valentine, a fireman and Democratic Party stalwart, ropes him into donning the copper star of the New York police, ushering him into a world of brothels, street toughs, abject poverty and rampant bigotry. Timothy is assigned to Manhattan’s notorious Sixth Ward — “hell’s privy pit,” he calls it — which includes the Five Points neighborhood that movie buffs will recall as the setting of Martin Scorsese’s 2002 epic Gangs of New York.
Heading home one night, Timothy literally collides with a terrified 10-year-old Irish girl, Bird Daly, who is dressed in a blood-soaked night shift. An escapee from a brothel that entraps children for pedophiles, Bird regales Timothy with seemingly tale tales about a boy who is about to be murdered, and many other children who already have met a similar fate.
Except that Bird’s claims are not the product of a vivid imagination. Her young friend Liam, newly arrived at the brothel, soon turns up in a trash can, with what looks like a cross carved into his torso. Eventually, Timothy finds himself investigating how some 20 children came to be buried in shallow, unmarked graves. The victims are believed to have been murdered by a mysterious sadist who makes his rounds with his face concealed by a black hood.
Although the police try to keep the deaths under wraps, someone purporting to be the killer writes a series of letters, one of which ends up in a newspaper. The letters claim the writer is an Irish vigilante who is targeting Irish “kinchin mabs” — children who work as prostitutes — to purify the city. Hostility toward the city’s Irish population intensifies when a boy is found crucified inside a Catholic church.
All of which poses serious problems for the Democrats who control city government. The party’s base of support is largely Irish, so a public backlash against the Irish could break the Democrats’ stranglehold on the city, transfer power to the Whigs, and destroy one of the Democratic Party’s most visible accomplishments: the city’s police force.
Timothy’s high-stakes investigation leaves the weary detective frustrated and beleaguered, but he has other problems to contend with as well, including his love-hate relationship with his brother and his deep but unexpressed love for Mercy. Only later does Tim discover that both Valentine and Mercy have dark secrets, and that his investigation is leading him down surprising paths.
In addition to spinning an electrifying tale, Lyndsay Faye convincingly transports readers to the more dubious corners of antebellum New York, thanks in large part to her use of “flash,” 19th-century slang compiled in a dictionary crafted by George W. Matsell, New York’s first police chief. The real-life Matsell is seen working on his dictionary in the novel.
A helpful lexicon in The Gods of Gotham defines the likes of a dead rabbit (a very athletic, rowdy fellow), palaver (to talk), physog (a face), fam grasp (to shake hands) and French cream (brandy).
Faye also does an eye-opening job of conveying the excesses of rabid nativism, particularly when American-born Protestants take aim at Irish immigrants and their Catholicism, which are attacked in the most strident terms. Several chapters of The Gods of Gotham open with short excerpts from actual anti-immigrant periodicals, such as an 1843 publication by the Orange County Protestant Reformation Society which condemns “the unrelenting cruelty” of the pope, “this most insatiable murderer of men.”
Faye’s New York is sordid, but also uplifting at times, not least because of a handsome piece of detective work as Timothy eventually ferrets out the shocking truth. It’s stunningly horrific, but from a storytelling perspective, satisfying as well.
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