Synopsis (from
the publisher):
Dobson, New York, 1905.
Detective Simon Ziele lost his fiancée in the General Slocum
ferry disaster—a thousand perished on that summer day in 1904
when an onboard fire burned the boat down in the waters of the East
River. Still reeling from the tragedy, Ziele transferred to a police
department north of New York, to escape the city and all the memories
it conjured.
But only a few months into his new life in a quiet country town,
he’s faced with the most shocking homicide of his career to date:
Young Sarah Wingate has been brutally murdered in her own bedroom in
the middle of an otherwise calm and quiet winter afternoon. After just
one day of investigation, Simon’s contacted by Columbia
University’s noted criminologist Alistair Sinclair, who offers a
startling claim about one of his patients, Michael Fromley—that
the facts of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to Fromley’s
deranged mutterings.
But what would have led Fromley, with his history of violent behavior
and brutal fantasies, to seek out Sarah, a notable mathematics student
and a proper young lady who has little in common with his previous
targets? Is Fromley really a murderer, or is someone mimicking him?
This is what Simon Ziele must find out, with the help of the brilliant
but self-interested Alistair Sinclair—before the killer strikes
again.
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— ◊ —
In the Shadow of Gotham
A Simon
Ziele Mystery
Stefanie
Pintoff
St. Martin's Minotaur (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-312-54490-1 (0312544901)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-54490-4 (9780312544904)
Publication Date: April 2009
List Price: $24.95
— ◊ —
Review: Stefanie
Pintoff introduces young police detective Simon Ziele investigating a
brutal murder among New York's upper class in In the Shadow of Gotham, which won
the Mystery Writers of America / St. Martin's Minotaur First Crime
Novel Award in 2008.
Set in late 1905, Simon Ziele is the new police detective in Dobson, a
small community of wealthy residents situated along the Hudson River
north of New York City. Murder is all but unheard of here, but the
niece of a prominent family, Sarah Wingate, is found stabbed, her face
beaten so badly it is nearly unrecognizable, and part of her hair cut
off. There are no witnesses and, worse for Ziele and his partner and
boss Joe Healy, no motive or suspect. Then an academic researcher from
Columbia, where the victim attended graduate school studying
Mathematics, one Alistair Sinclair, puts forth an interesting premise:
a man he's been studying, Michael Fromley, fits the profile of the
killer. Sinclair is even able to provide unpublished details about the
murder scene without having visited it. Despite no physical evidence
linking Fromley (who, to no one's surprise, has disappeared) to Sarah
Wingate, Ziele, working with Sinclair, begins to link together the
disparate threads that tie the two together and form the foundation for
an arrest and conviction.
In the Shadow of Gotham
is a beautifully written, atmospheric novel, replete with historical
details that relate to the time and place of the story. But it's also
rather flat, lifeless as it were. The story is told from the
perspective of Ziele, who is a very analytical person. He's just
beginning to use the new science of forensics, and is very detail
oriented. So it's probably not unexpected that the narrative is
analytical as well. But after a while it gets somewhat monotonous, not
necessarily uninteresting, but unexciting. For example, early in the
book Ziele says, "Like me, he [crime photographer Peter] attempted to
sanitize the horror of this crime by reducing it to base analytical
terms. Today, in the midst of so much blood, I had trouble facing up to
the Wingate crime scene. But tomorrow I would have no difficulty
reviewing and analyzing the autopsy report. It was always far easier to
deal with the violence of murder when it was reduced to words and facts
on paper." And that's what happens, in large part, in the book:
everything is simply reduced to words and facts on paper, well crafted
and thought out though they most certainly are. Which would probably be
sufficient and satisfactory if Ziele himself were more animated, more
interesting in his own right. When asked at one point, "'When you
arrest a man for a particularly heinous crime, don't you often wonder
why he did it?'", Ziele says to the reader, "I had to confess I did
not."
Still, it's hard not to appreciate the writer's skill in creating a
probable pathway for Ziele's case all the while deftly inserting clues
that ultimately lead in another direction. In the Shadow of Gotham is a fine
start to the series, but one wonders how much more memorable it might
have been had it been more spirited, more energetic.
Special thanks to Breakthrough Promotions for providing a copy of In the Shadow of Gotham for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read In the Shadow of Gotham? How would you rate it?
In the Shadow of Gotham
St. Martin's Minotaur (Hardcover), April 2009
ISBN-10: 0-312-54490-1 (0312544901)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-54490-4 (9780312544904)
Omnimystery keywords for In the Shadow of Gotham ...
Location(s) referenced: New York City.
