"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." (Francis Bacon)

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Seven for a Secret

TITLE: Seven for a Secret
AUTHOR: Lyndsay Faye

The second Timothy Wilde mystery is the middle book in a trilogy and an examination of the threats to free blacks living in New York City, and by extension, anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. When a free black woman rushes into police headquarters at the Tombs in 1846, claiming her son and her sister were kidnapped by slave hunters from the south, Copper Star Timothy Wilde takes the case, and becomes embroiled in a complex, heartbreaking case that earns him the wrong kind of attention from the Democratic party bosses.

Faye, as she did in the first book of the trilogy, The Gods of Gotham, brings New York City in the 1840s to life, showing the fruits of her research. Between the details of life at the time, the political climate, the bigotry that echoes modern times and shows how little has changed in too many ways, and the intricate machinations at the heart of the case Tim investigates, I was once again drawn into the past. The mystery might be fiction, but the time and place were all too real. I highly recommend this for lovers of historical fiction and mysteries.


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