Betrayal on the Bowery
A Gilded Gotham Mystery
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Not all that glitters is gold in this “excellent” Gilded Age mystery “brimming with danger, romance, and historical tidbits” (Kirkus Reviews).
A puzzling investigation takes former society girl Genevieve Stewart and millionaire Daniel McCaffrey from New York’s poshest sanctuaries to its meanest streets.
New York City, Summer 1889. Society girl-turned-investigative journalist Genevieve Stewart and wealthy Daniel McCaffrey have arrived at the docks to see their friends, Rupert and Esmie Milton, off on their honeymoon. But the romantic idyll comes to a screeching halt when a crazed man bursts into their stateroom screaming about demons and drops dead before their eyes.
The dead man is Marcus Dalrymple, who had once asked Esmie to marry him—and inside Marcus’s pocket, Daniel finds a medallion that they trace to a Lower East Side bar called Boyle’s Suicide Tavern. The medallions are prizes given to anyone who spends the night there without dying.
Clearly, a visit to Boyle’s could prove hazardous, but it may offer the only clue to Dalrymple’s death. Genevieve and Daniel barely escape the bar with their lives but learn that the crime could have a connection to the recent disappearance of a sugar baron’s daughter. Only after another young man plunges to his death from a rooftop bar—also screaming about demons—do the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together.
The clues lead Genevieve and Daniel far from the city’s moneyed environs to a reputedly haunted mansion deep in the Bronx. There, they will confront the truth—and the demon at its heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Belli's middling sequel to 2020's Deception by Gaslight begins in June 1889, when society-page reporter Genevieve Stewart and her sometime investigative partner, Daniel McCaffrey, go to see Rupert Milton, Lord Umberland, and his bride, Esmie, off on their honeymoon voyage. Aboard the ship, Marcus Dalrymple, a former suitor of Esmie's, bursts into the couple's stateroom, babbles about danger and demons, and dies. Inside Marcus's pocket is a souvenir medallion from a Bowery dive known as Boyle's Suicide Tavern, legendary for the deaths said to occur on the upper floors. Genevieve and Daniel discover no clues when they visit Boyle's the next day, but while they're dining at a rooftop restaurant that night another young man begins rambling incoherently about a demon before jumping from the parapet. Soon afterward, the police discover that Marcus was poisoned and arrest Rupert for the crime. Belli evocatively portrays Gilded Age New York, but the diffuse plot is too reliant on coincidence to generate much suspense. Historical mystery fans can safely take a pass.