Westside: A Novel

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year!

The Alienist meets The City & The City in this brilliant debut that mixes fantasy and mystery. Gilda Carrs tiny mysteries pack a giant punch. --David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Art

A young detective who specializes in tiny mysteries finds herself at the center of a massive conspiracy in this beguiling historical fantasy set on Manhattans Westsidea peculiar and dangerous neighborhood home to strange magic and stranger residentsthat blends the vivid atmosphere of Caleb Carr with the imaginative power of Neil Gaiman.

Its 1921, and a thirteen-mile fence running the length of Broadway splits the island of Manhattan, separating the prosperous Eastside from the Westsidean overgrown wasteland whose hostility to modern technology gives it the flavor of old New York. Thousands have disappeared here, and the respectable have fled, leaving behind the killers, thieves, poets, painters, drunks, and those too poor or desperate to leave.

It is a hellish landscape, and Gilda Carr proudly calls it home.

Slightly built, but with a will of iron, Gilda follows in the footsteps of her late father, a police detective turned private eye. Unlike that larger-than-life man, Gilda solves tiny mysteries: the impossible puzzles that keep us awake at night; the small riddles that destroy us; the questions that spoil marriages, ruin friendships, and curdle joy. Those tiny cases distract her from her grief, and the one impossible question she knows she cant answer: How did my father die?

Yet on Gildas Westside, tiny mysteries end in bloodeven the case of a missing white leather glove. Mrs. Copeland, a well-to-do Eastside housewife, hires Gilda to find it before her irascible merchant husband learns it is gone. When Gilda witnesses Mr. Copelands murder at a Westside pier, she finds herself sinking into a mire of bootlegging, smuggling, corruptionand an evil too dark to face.

All she wants is to find one dainty ladies glove. She doesnt want to know why this merchant was on the wrong side of townor why he was murdered in cold blood. But as she begins to see the connection between his murder, her fathers death, and the darkness plaguing the Westside, she faces the hard truth: she must save her city or die with it.

Introducing a truly remarkable female detective, Westside is a mystery steeped in the supernatural and shot through with gunfights, rotgut whiskey, and sizzling Dixieland jazz. Full of dazzling color, delightful twists, and truly thrilling action, it announces the arrival of a wonderful new talent.