"* 'Gaffney has engineered a thrilling Brooklyn Bridge of a novel, at once old-fashioned and utterly modern, grand and charming, elegant and massive, imposing and delightful, carrying us in inimitable style across the rich, rank waters of New York City's history.' Michael Chabon * A wonderful recreation of the heady world into which so many Irish emigrants arrived to build new lives for themselves 150 years ago.' Irish Independent * '[An] engrossing tale of crime and romance...[a] splendidly bleak portrayal of the mid-Victorian city's underbelly' Guardian * 'A sprawling epic of a novel... this good old fashioned ripping yarn told with no little zest.' Glasgow Herald"
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