31 Bond Street

Fiction

352

2018-06-26 18:12:42

Scandal, social climbing, and corruption in Manhattan during the 1850s come alive in Horan’s historical mystery. Emma Cunningham, a widow with two teenage daughters, becomes financially and emotionally involved with Harvey Burdell, a wealthy dentist and land speculator. Without witnesses, he is murdered brutally in their Bond Street townhouse, and Cunningham is accused of the crime. An ambitious lawyer, Henry Clinton, risks his reputation and livelihood to defend her and solve the crime. Meanwhile, Horan describes living conditions in mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan: government corruption is rampant, Tammany Hall is coming to power, the Fugitive Slave Acts threaten to undo the work of the Underground Railroad, and poverty and wealth run equally rampant. Horan’s characters, like Edith Wharton’s, are motivated by social class and survival in a world ruled by wealth and national uncertainty.

HarperCollins UK

9780007304042

2018-06-26 18:12:42