What's a fella to do????

The Midnight Band of Mercy by Michael Blaine


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What begins as a simple, lurid tale of Catricide soon develops into one of greed, Eugenics, and the slaughter of another group of Innocents.

Max Greengrass, a stringer for the NEW YORK HERALD, is paid by the column-inch..so everything has "story-potential" in his eyes....and his pocketbook. When he stumbles, literally, upon a tableau of dead cats, one drunken evening, he sees only the number of paragraphs to be eked out for a story...unbeknownst to him, however, is the fact that this Story could be the the Big One..to make his career or end his life....

1890s NYC..Tammany hall in its grand corruption...swank lawyers playing both sides of the courtroom. Clergyman Reformers having it both ways with Sin & Salvation, while the city's poorest pay the tab...The Hudson Dusters and their Gangland ilk provide "color".....a sexy radical Settlement House nurse and a dedicated, Bluestocking photographer provide the "love interest' in Max's life....when he's not being throttled by street Arabs..or The Herald's City Editor..

A vibrant cast of characters and a plot "ripped from the headlines" make this a fast-paced, enjoyable read....and you just might learn some History in the process.

**** (4 Stars)