Stefanie Pintoff’s “In The Shadow of Gotham”, a classy and taut historical crime novel, is set at the turn of the 20th century. Winner of The Edgar award for best first novels in America, “Gotham” is a wonderfully atmospheric tale of greed, betrayal and dogged detection.
In the Shadow of Gotham
The book spans seven days in November 1905 and is a two centre story; New York City and 17 miles north in the small town of Dobson, Westchester County where Detective Simon Ziele now plies his trade as a detective.
Simon Ziele lost his fiancée in one of the greatest disasters ever to hit New York when in excess of a thousand passengers lost their lives to a fire on board the General Slocum Steamboat. In a bid to recover from his loss and the ever increasing violence of New York City he escapes to Dobson to begin a new career, thanks in part to the monetary support from the local Mayor.
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Two months into his new job Sarah Wingate, an accomplished mathematician, is brutally murdered in her bedroom in the middle of a winter’s afternoon. The first murder to occur in Dobson for 12 years Ziele has his work cut out for him – a shortage of witnesses, lack of evidence and a partner who remains unconvinced – the cards are heavily stacked against him.
That is until he receives word that the eccentric and highly distinguished criminologist from Columbia University, Alistair Sinclair, knows who committed the murder. Michael Foley, a dangerous criminal with a violent past is the key suspect. Ziele, together with Sinclair and his daughter-in-law Isabella face a frenetic race across New York’s underworld in a bid to solve the murder before the murderer kills again.
As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, certainly when dealing with historical fiction, I thoroughly enjoy novels that have an assemblance of truth and encourage the reader to delve deeper into the true events of the period. Although Pintoff utilises her authorial licence to stretch fiction, there is more than enough fact in “Gotham” to make you want to read more about the Slocum disaster of 1904, the Mayoral voting scandal and the election fraud in November1905.
The book has a wonderful natural and unforced pace and while the prose is heavily reliant on dialogue, I found it incredibly taut. Given that Gotham is narrated in its entirety by Simon Ziele, I found it was presented as more of a personal journey than an ordinary detective story.
Pintoff’s descriptive powers of New York City are brought to the fore and you really had a sense of walking through the seedier parts of the city, taking a tram or catching the metro downtown. It certainly wasn’t hard to travel back in time to a period when police forensics was in its relative infancy. The wearing of cotton gloves at crime scenes to avoid cross contamination and the fingerprint analysis we take for granted in the 21st century was still an untested procedure in those days.
At the heart of any good novel is the main character. In Simon Ziele, Stefanie Pintoff has created a highly competent and likeable detective who, despite a charming fallibility, has so much to offer this series. A character one can easily relate with, I enjoyed his powers of deduction and I found myself comparing him, in some ways, to Sherlock Holmes. The introduction of Sinclair’s character is an interesting one and I can certainly see the direction the author will take their relationship.
So there you have it, “In The Shadow of Gotham” is a CSI styled historical crime novel set in late 1905 where police procedurals come under the microscope. Full of twists and turns it had me guessing until the final pages. Wonderful debut performance – I expect great things from Pintoff and look forward to the next instalment of Ziele and Sinclair!
Published by Penguin “Gotham” is available to buy from Amazon & The Book Depository
