Seven for a Secret

3.5 stars In this second book in the 'Timothy Wilde' series, Tim is one of New York City's first police officers - on the trail of corrupt slave catchers. The book can be read as a standalone. ***** In the mid-1800s, New York City had hundreds of thousands of residents living in rotting wooden tenemen......more

I gushed over Lyndsay Faye's The Gods of Gotham, her debut foray into the dark heart of New York City 1845 and the violent and inauspicious origins of its first police force -- the copper stars. In its pages Faye strikes a remarkable balance between the thrilling and cerebral aspects of a good myste......more

The second installment in Lyndsay Faye's excellently detailed, historically accurate series about the founding of the police force in antebellum NYC is a story about the illegal slave trade and systematic kidnapping of free blacks to be sold to the South for profit. Having just finished a history of......more

Six months after the events of The Gods of Gotham, where-in we get to participate in the 1845 founding and very early days of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), we catch up with young Timothy Wilde, a "Copper Star" in the new police force. He's a proven asset now, an excellent solver of cri......more

'Seven For A Secret' is good enough to disappoint. It is clear that the author, Lyndsay Faye, has real talent. The writing is sometimes excellent. Too often, however, it veers into being irritating, overly worked or overly arch. The idea behind the novel, the way the law was used in the mid-nineteenth......more