Metropolis - Softcover

Gaffney, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434013315 ISBN 13: 9780434013319

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2005

Synopsis

'The age of cast iron had not yet begun, but by 1868, you could feel a growth spurt of some sort coming on, you could sense it in the wide open sky. Steamships were edging out the tall ships, ripping out the threads of the way things had once been done. You could say the city's extraordinary nature lurked, in those days. It was biding its time, waiting for just the right moment to surge forward and change into something bigger, newer, better.'Arriving in New York in 1868, on the run from a scandal - or perhaps a crime - back in his native Hamburg, our hero, travelling under the name of Georg Geiermeier, becomes a stableboy, tending circus-owner Barnum's menagerie, until he is framed for an arson attack and finds himself once again is on the run. Falling into the hands of the Whyos, a gang who communicate with each other by means of a complicated system of songs and calls, he is reborn as an Irish labourer and takes a job as a sewerman, unaware of the part in crime the Whyos have in mind for him. Happy in his new job and falling in love with Beatrice, the young Irishwoman the Whyos have selected to teach him Irish English, all seems well, until the gang's leader chooses Beatrice as his First Girl and the criminal plans of the Whyos begin to become clear-Set in a richly realised nineteenth-century New York, a world of crime, corruption, prostitution and disease, Elisabeth Gaffney's debut is a hugely entertaining, irresistibly readable story of love and crime.

About this title

Review:

"'engrossing tale of crime and romance...splendidly bleak'" (The Guardian)

"A gripping tale of crime and love." (Time Out)

"A tension-filled crime novel, a thrilling historical exploration, and a wonderfully surreal vision... The reader is compelled to turn each page... An extraordinary achievement." (Daily Telegraph)

From the Publisher:

A hugely entertaining and richly realised literary historical first novel, set in the New York underworld of the 1860s, in the tradition of Caleb Carr's The Alienist and Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White.

'Mesmerizing... An extraordinary achievement' Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0434013315
• ISBN 13: 9780434013319
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496