In The Shadow of Gotham

by Stefanie Pintoff

I was out of town a few months ago and had run out of all reading materials. I was on one of my daily walks and I found a small, quaint bookstore in the alley of a shopping complex. It was the kind of bookstore where the person behind the counter could tell you about every book in the store and every great book and staff recommendations. That’s how I came upon In The Shadow of Gotham.

This is not a romance. I haven’t read too many of these books. There was no handsome man to fall for and no sex to be had. Just old fashion whodunit mystery.

1905, suburb of Dobson, a suburb of NYC, Detective Simon Ziele encounters the stabbing of prominent Sarah Wingate, left in her house with part of her hair cut off. There’s no motive, no suspect.

Michael Fromley, a man with a violent past but with no evidence linking him to the crime can Detective Ziele piece together all the threads to make an arrest?

The novel is beautifully written with a lot of historical details. Detective Ziele is just beginning to use forensic techniques that were available at the turn of the century. That’s one of the aspects that I enjoyed about this book. It seems that we are inundated with CSI type shows on every channel so I enjoyed reading about when these techniques were first coming into practice.

As a reader who normally reads romance I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was scared and once I got past the first 70 pages I couldn’t put it down. Pintoff puts enough clues in to lead you in one direction all the while taking you in different direction that you won’t get to until the end.

This is the first book for Stefanie Pintoff and this is the first of series focusing around Detective Ziele. Happy reading!