Saxton Reads! & Reviews

   Author Photo by Alison Sheehy

 

My new novel, In the Shadow of Gotham, is the first in a new   

historical mystery series set in turn-of-the-last-century New York.    

It introduces Detective Simon Ziele, who has left New York City to   

rebuild his life in a small Westchester town following the loss of his   

fiancée in the Slocum steamship disaster (the worst disaster to strike   

the city prior to 9/11).  But the brutal murder of a young woman draws   

him right back into the city – and when early criminal profiler   

Alistair Sinclair becomes involved, Ziele finds himself caught in   

unusual circumstances. 

 

Alistair believes that he knows the killer’s identity – in fact, he is   

convinced the killer is someone he interviewed in the course of his   

experimental research into the criminal mind.  His evidence is   

compelling, but Ziele is suspicious of a solution that seems too good   

to be true – and leery of putting too much trust in a man whose   

methods are unorthodox and whose agenda is directed by his own   

ambition. They make an unlikely pair:  Alistair is a high-brow society   

figure with a consuming passion for understanding criminal violence,   

and Ziele is a pragmatic investigator with Lower East Side roots and a   

remarkable affinity for each victim he encounters.  And at the heart   

of their relationship is a larger debate:  when lives are at stake,   

how much can we trust in the new, unproven methods of modern forensics? 

 

By 1905, more innovative criminal scientists were just beginning to   

challenge the prevailing opinion that criminal behavior resulted from   

a flaw of nature – a view popularized by Lombroso’s theory of the   

“born criminal.”  Scientists like my Alistair Sinclair sought to   

challenge these notions by interviewing and learning from a variety of   

incarcerated criminals.  “Evil is less threatening when we understand   

it” is his mantra.  But people worried that if we came to understand   

the criminal mind too well, then we might excuse (and not punish)   

criminal behavior.  Alistair’s ambitions were also limited by a   

virtual race against time.  Unlike today, when convicted murderers   

typically spend years on death row before facing the executioner,   

justice worked fast in turn-of-the-century New York.  Appeals were   

adjudicated in months, not years – and the execution date usually   

followed within weeks, if not days.  So someone like Alistair had very   

little time to gain the trust of and interview more violent offenders. 

 

                                        

 

Of course, Simon Ziele and Alistair Sinclair don’t just take the   

reader into the world of early criminology.  Their investigation of a   

terrible murder also leads them to explore all that is glamorous – and   

gritty – in old New York, from high-class restaurants and society   

parties to saloons and gambling dens.  If you’d like to learn more   

about me or my book – which should be available here at the Saxton   

Library soon – I encourage you to check out my website at http://www.stefaniepintoff.com