The House on Mulberry Street

By Maan Meyers

Book Overview

It's 1895, and the face of Manhattan is rapidly changing. From the electric-lit elegance of Delmonico's Restaurant and Broadway to a netherworld of stifling immigrant tenements, bordellos, and rotgut whiskey, the city simmers in the summer heat. Graft is everywhere-and most of all at 300 Mulberry Street, Metropolitan Police Headquarters, where the men in blue mingle with crooks and corrupt lawyers of every stripe.Here young police detective John "Dutch" Tonneman observes firsthand the behind-the-scenes backstabbing between top brass and would-be reformers. But it's a suspicious waterfront blaze and a union rally turned violent that threaten to tear the city apart at the seams.Tonneman arrives on the scene just in time to save a pretty, vivacious young photographer from a vicious assault. Esther Breslau is a lovely Polish Jewish immigrant who worked her way from the sweatshops to a job as a photographer with a crusading newspaper reporter. But when the reporter turns up murdered and Esther's photographic plates are smashed, it's obvious that Esther's pictures were something someone wanted very badly indeed. And now the only living eyewitness to what Esther saw through her camera lens is Esther herself.As the sweltering city reaches the boiling point and a murderer stalks the cobblestoned streets, it's up to Detective Tonneman and Esther to unravel a dangerous mystery whose roots are buried deep in the sordid underbelly of Manhattan-but whose branches may reach to the heights of political power.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1628152915
• ISBN13: 9781628152913
• Release Date: March 2016
• Publisher: Speaking Volumes, LLC
• Length: 324 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A trip down nostalgia lane...

THE PLOT Esther Breslau is a Jewish immigrant who has found a job working as a photographer in the graft-filled world of 1895 Manhattan. John Tonnerman is an honest cop, a rare commodity on a police-force filled with those on the take and in a city where your innocence depends on the size of your pocketbook.Esther takes a picture during a riot and the thugs notice and come after her. A reporter she's been working with has the plates but the thugs worry about what he knows and take matters into their own hands to silence him forever.John and Esther try to figure it all out.WHAT I LIKED / DIDN'T LIKE The characters are numerous but sufficiently different that they don't run together. A few of the characters will likely show up in future stories, and hopefully were fleshed out for that reason. The reporter is fleshed out a little too much at the start considering he's the one who is killed, but it is the first in the series, and Meyers had to introduce Esther enough at the start that you get to know the reporter a little too well for a corpse. The research was impeccable, and the epilogue is a nice touch to separate fact from fiction. The writing is first-rate and the settings are alive with the time. Each image portrays the world of the time, and the reader is transported easily with each page.One of the best historical mysteries I have ever read, and one of the better mysteries period.OVERALL RATING 4.50 / 5.00