Read March 2019. To be published 4th July 2019.New York, in 1803, is a city filled with tension, as black and Irish gangs fight for control on the streets. Violence is never far away.
When a young girl is found murdered in an alleyway, Marshal Justice Flanagan undertakes the difficult search for the killer, before the mob takes the law into their own hands.
Kerry O'Toole, Justy's friend and ally, was the one who found the murdered girl. The killing haunts her and she decides to look into the murder herself to find out the truth behind why a young girl was left butchered in the mud.
Justy and Kelly's inquiries will lead them to a shadowy community living on the edges of the city, but there is more at stake than the search for the killer of a young girl. They are about to find themselves involved in a web of deceit that runs deep into both the political and criminal hierarchies.
Justy and Kerry must fight to save the city and for their own survival.
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I cannot tell you how much I loved, loved, loved this book!
This book is the second in the Lawless New York series - historical thrillers set in the steaming cauldron of the early days of New York city, around the turn of the 19th century.
The days when the black and Irish gangs ran the seedy side of the over-crowded city, while the "nobs" concerned themselves with money and high living. Tension abounds and violence is always close to the surface, as the few Marshals try to impose some sort of law and order.
Justy is desperate to do the right thing, for the good of the city, but has just the right amount of disregard for procedure necessary to get to the truth. He is a good man in a city of brigands, but has enough contacts on both sides of the law to get the job done, and is not afraid to make enemies along the way.
Kerry is living a more or less respectable life, but her past on the wrong side of the law, and relations in the criminal underworld are very helpful sometimes. She too has a passion for doing what is right, even if she finds this hard to admit to others. She makes a good partner for Justy, but they need to trust each other more - their simmering, but unspoken love for each other gets in the way at times, but all works out well in the end.
There are some great supporting characters in this book too, such as Justy's friend Lars, and I particularly enjoyed the part played by Hardluck, the slave carriage driver.
Great villains abound, who you will love to hate and long for them to get their comeuppance.
As someone who has devoured the entire Richard Sharpe series, I can detect echoes of Bernard Cornwall in this book - which is a very fine thing indeed. Paddy Hirsch has clearly done his homework on the origins of New York here and this tells.
If you are looking for a fine historical thriller, with good guys you can get behind, and bad guys you can detest, then this is exactly the book you are looking for.
I adored it and devoured it in practically one whole sitting, while on a flight back from Cyprus. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought and read Book One, The Devil's Half Mile, to fill in the back stories of Justy, Kelly and co!
See my review of The Devil's Half Mile here: The Devil's Half Mile by Paddy Hirsch Reviewl
Both books are absolutely to behold too, and are fit to grace any self-respecting book shelf!
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