KDL Recommends

The Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York

ISBN: 0393062317

Title: The Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York

Author: Joel Rose

KDL Description:

Fiction
During the summer of 1841, High Constable Jacob Hays, New York City’s first detective, finds himself investigating a series of brutal crimes, including the rape and murder of Mary Rogers, a young clerk at a Manhattan tobacco shop.

Amazon Description:

“Irresistibly seductive… Murder mystery, historical novel, portal to another time; The Blackest Bird is a masterpiece.” — Anthony Bourdain

In the sweltering New York City summer of 1841, Mary Rogers, a popular counter girl at a tobacco shop in Manhattan, is found brutally ravaged in the shallows of the Hudson River. John Colt, scion of the firearm fortune, beats his publisher to death with a hatchet. And young Irish gang leader Tommy Coleman is accused of killing his daughter, his wife, and his wife’s former lover. Charged with solving it all is High Constable Jacob Hays, the city’s first detective. At the end of a long and distinguished career, Hays’s investigation will ultimately span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbers, and clues hidden in poems by the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night: Edgar Allan Poe.