The Gods of Gotham

By Lyndsay Faye,

Book cover of The Gods of Gotham

Book description

'Spectacular' Gillian Flynn. GODS OF GOTHAM is the fantastic first novel in Lyndsay Faye's Edgar Award-nominated series, for fans of Andrew Taylor and Antonia Hodgson's The Devil in the Marshalsea.

August 1845 in New York; enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points...

After a fire decimates…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Gods of Gotham as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Disfigured and jobless after a fire, Timothy Wilde takes a job with the newly formed NYPD. He is assigned to the Sixth Ward, right on the border of the Five Points, a ward notorious for the desperately poor who live there and the rampant crime. One night he finds a young girl running through the street in a nightgown soaked with blood. She tells an unbelievable story of bodies buried in a nearby woods. Wilde investigates and soon finds himself a target of the city’s wealthy, several of whom are guilty of the most heinous of crimes but feel entitled…

The Gods of Gotham is a richly layered mystery set in 1845 New York City, where Timothy Wilde, as a member of the recently established police department, searches for a serial killer. The prose is sumptuous and casts you back into the time period as if an actual time traveler. Faye develops a gripping tale set amidst a real place, as well as people and events that fascinated me. It is a combination of history and mystery that blends two of my loves and kept me rapt into the pages. 

From Matt's list on where history and mystery merge.

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