FACES IN THE CROWD

A sprawling, chaotic, Hogarthian glimpse of Victorian-era crime in Manhattan, again featuring police officers Tillman and Muldoon (The New York Detective, 1989), now trying to track down Rotary Rosie Seymore, supposedly dead, but the last name on a prostitute's lips before she fell from a rooftop. The quest uncovers an evil conspiracy involving: the code words ``oubliette,'' ``embrasure,'' ``donjon,'' ``pailisade,'' ``portcullis,'' ``archer,'' and ``bailey''; secret orders whispered over a newfangled invention, the telephone; clues in the abandoned Underground Pneumatic Railroad beneath a department store; shenanigans by an Immigration official; a horrendous sojourn with the lunatics on Blackwell's Island; and a comeuppance with General Custer's medical officer in Potter's Field as he screams about the immoral decisions made by the powerful in America, the land of opportunity. Told with period verve and Bosch-like cruelty at a 200 horsepower tempo by an energetic, raucous, and very knowledgeable tour guide to New York's more unsavory past.