Murder on Trinity Place

Having just returned from a trip to New York City and visiting Trinity Church, Murder on Trinity Place by Victoria Thompson became all the more real to me.

It is 1899 and the city is readying itself for the year to turn to 1900. Frank and Sarah Malloy are preparing to go to Trinity Church to hear the bells ring in the New Year. When they arrive, they notice Mr. Pritchard, a relative of their neighbor Mrs. Ellsworth wandering through the crowd and acting strangely. They know from past experience that Pritchard is trying to convince the masses that the new century begins next year in 1901, not 1900. No one is interested in his theory and many push him aside. 

Frank tries to catch up with him and drive him home, but he loses him in the crowd. The next day Pritchard is discovered dead and shoved in the bushes on the grounds of Trinity Church. The police aren't interested in solving the murder, so Frank and Sarah are hired by Pritchard's daughter Theda to discover who killed her father and why.

Pritchard had been the owner of a successful dairy in New York delivering pasteurized milk throughout the city. Frank wonders if he had enemies, but no one is mentioned. There had been obvious tension with his son Harvey. Harvey, recently expelled from college for gambling, seems to have fallen back into his old habits. 

As Frank digs deeper her realizes there must be some connection between the gambling debts and the local gangsters who collect them. The more he digs, the messier the Pritchard relationships become. 

Rich New York detail and clever characters make the Gaslight Mystery series a pleasure to read.