“Superb . his study is excellent . . . his prose sharply crystalline.” — New York Times Book Review

“The Alienist fits THE TOWN & The City in this brilliant debut that mixes illusion and mystery. Gilda Carr’s ‘small mysteries’ pack a giant punch.’ –David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Artwork

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A young detective who specializes in “small mysteries” finds herself at the guts of a massive conspiracy within this beguiling historical fantasy set on Manhattan’s about Westside: A Novel Westside-a peculiar and harmful neighborhood home to strange magic and stranger residents-that blends the vivid atmosphere of Caleb Carr with the imaginative power of Neil Gaiman.

It’s 1921, and a thirteen-mile fence jogging the length of Broadway splits the isle of Manhattan, separating the prosperous Eastside through the Westside-an overgrown wasteland whose hostility to modern tools offers it the flavor of old NY. Thousands have vanished here, as well as the respectable have fled, abandoning the killers, thieves, poets, painters, drunks, and those too poor or eager to leave.

It really is a hellish panorama, and Gilda Carr proudly phone calls it home.

Slightly built, but having a will of iron, Gilda follows in the footsteps of her past due father, a police detective turned private eye. Unlike that larger-than-life guy, Gilda solves small mysteries: the impossible puzzles that maintain us awake at night; the tiny riddles that eliminate us; the questions that spoil marriages, mess up friendships, and curdle joy. Those tiny cases distract her from her grief, and the main one impossible question she understands she can’t answer: “How do my father perish?”

Yet on Gilda’s Westside, tiny mysteries end in blood-even the situation of the missing white leather glove. Mrs. Copeland, a well-to-do Eastside housewife, hires Gilda to think it is before her irascible vendor husband learns it really is eliminated. When Gilda witnesses Mr. Copeland’s murder at a Westside pier, she finds herself sinking into a mire of bootlegging, smuggling, corruption-and an bad too dark to face.

All she wants is to find one dainty girls’ glove. She doesn’t wish to know why this merchant was on the incorrect aspect of town-or why he was murdered in frosty blood. But mainly because she starts to start to see the connection between his murder, her father’s loss of life, as well as the darkness plaguing the Westside, she faces the hard truth: she must save her town or expire with it.

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