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Summary
Summary
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year!
"The Alienist meets The City & The City in this brilliant debut that mixes fantasy and mystery. Gilda Carr's 'tiny mysteries' pack a giant punch." --David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of Murder As a Fine Art
A young detective who specializes in "tiny mysteries" finds herself at the center of a massive conspiracy in this beguiling historical fantasy set on Manhattan's Westside--a peculiar and dangerous 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 running the length of Broadway splits the island of Manhattan, separating the prosperous Eastside from the Westside--an overgrown wasteland whose hostility to modern technology gives it the flavor of old New York. Thousands have disappeared here, and the respectable have fled, leaving behind the killers, thieves, poets, painters, drunks, and those too poor or desperate to leave.
It is a hellish landscape, and Gilda Carr proudly calls it home.
Slightly built, but with a will of iron, Gilda follows in the footsteps of her late father, a police detective turned private eye. Unlike that larger-than-life man, Gilda solves tiny mysteries: the impossible puzzles that keep us awake at night; the small riddles that destroy us; the questions that spoil marriages, ruin friendships, and curdle joy. Those tiny cases distract her from her grief, and the one impossible question she knows she can't answer: "How did my father die?"
Yet on Gilda's Westside, tiny mysteries end in blood--even the case of a missing white leather glove. Mrs. Copeland, a well-to-do Eastside housewife, hires Gilda to find it before her irascible merchant husband learns it is gone. When Gilda witnesses Mr. Copeland's murder at a Westside pier, she finds herself sinking into a mire of bootlegging, smuggling, corruption--and an evil too dark to face.
All she wants is to find one dainty ladies' glove. She doesn't want to know why this merchant was on the wrong side of town--or why he was murdered in cold blood. But as she begins to see the connection between his murder, her father's death, and the darkness plaguing the Westside, she faces the hard truth: she must save her city or die with it.
Introducing a truly remarkable female detective, Westside is a mystery steeped in the supernatural and shot through with gunfights, rotgut whiskey, and sizzling Dixieland jazz. Full of dazzling color, delightful twists, and truly thrilling action, it announces the arrival of a wonderful new talent.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in an alternate 1920s Manhattan where a 13-mile fence divides the thriving Eastside from a nightmarish Westside, Akers's highly entertaining debut introduces Gilda Carr, a street-savvy PI. A Westsider, Gilda specializes in solving "tiny mysteries," but her search for a woman's missing glove leads her straight into the center of a looming war and offers up clues that could resolve such troubling issues as what magic is turning the Westside into a living hell, where thousands of people have disappeared and landscapes change overnight, and what happened to her father, a legendary gang leader turned cop who vanished years earlier. A cast of meticulously developed and memorable characters as well as strong worldbuilding and atmospherics more than compensate for the sometimes flimsy supernatural thread. Memorable prose is a plus ("The white lights of Broadway shimmered through the gin like gasoline in gutter water"). Fans of genre-bending fiction will relish this inventive mix of mystery and the paranormal. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Akers' debut novel is an addictively readable fusion of mystery, dark fantasy, alternate history, and existential horror.Gilda Carr is a 27-year-old private investigator living on the Westside of a 1921 Manhattan that is divided by miles of barbed-wire fence running down Broadway. The heavily guarded partition separates the Eastside from its otherworldly neighbor to the west, where thousands of people have inexplicably vanished over the years and strange occurrenceslike disappearing doorways in homeshave become commonplace. Carr specializes in solving "tiny mysteries," but when she agrees to find a woman's lost leather glove she becomes entangled in a much largerand more dangerousmystery, involving ruthless crime lords, bootlegged moonshine, and a looming turf war that could kill hundreds. Carr's own missing fathera legendary brawler-turned-NYPD detectiveis strangely connected to many of the key players. As the fearless Carr uncovers more secrets, she also begins to understand what happened to her presumably dead fatherand why. The seamless blending of genre elements creates a fresh and unpredictable narrative, but the real power here comes from Akers' focus on description throughout. Masterful worldbuilding, character development, and attention to dark atmospherics make for a fully immersive read in which even secondary characters are memorable. An elevator operator, for example is portrayed as having "skin the color of raw kielbasa," and the elevator ride to a hotel's penthouse is powered by sublime imagery: "[Jazz] music echoed down the elevator shaft like far-off gunsintoxicating, dangerous, and impossible to resist." The cast of deeply developed characters and the richly envisioned setting are perfectly complemented by a breakneck-paced and action-packed storyline. It's like a literary shot of Prohibition-era rotgut moonshinebracing, quite possibly hallucination-inducing, and unlike anything you've ever experienced before.The illegitimate love child of Algernon Blackwood and Raymond Chandler. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A fence divides Manhattan into the prosperous Eastside and the dangerous Westside. Westside has always been the place where strange, almost supernatural occurrences happen. When people start to disappear, residents worry, but the authorities do nothing. Longtime Westside resident Gilda Carr specializes in tiny mysteries. When she is approached by society lady Edith Copeland to find the match to the glove she lost, Gilda takes the case. Little does she know that this tiny mystery will lead her to the discovery of a shadowy underworld, multiple attempts on her life, and the possible answer to her father's disappearance. Akers has created a believable alternate-1920s New York City, full of bootleggers, jazz babies, and corrupt cops as well as some potentially supernatural creatures. The villains are larger than life but believably human in their greed and selfishness. Like the best reluctant heroes, Gilda is as quick with a quip as she is with her trigger finger. Full of action and colorful characters, this genre mash-up is expertly done and will be enjoyed by fans of mysteries and fantasy alike.--Lynnanne Pearson Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Lost and profoundly myopic souls abound in Tanen's tale - the Y.A. author's debut adult novel - of two dysfunctional families. Marty Kessler, a 75-year-old retired movie producer who "made the geeks the heroes long before that idea had occurred to anyone else," is a mess. As are his adult daughters, Janine and Amanda. The cause? Perhaps Hollywood, an industry Marty considers "fundamentally corrupt and immoral," or perhaps the Kesslers' own tendencies: They have always "glossed over the horrors" of their lives. And there are many. His fortune is dwindling, a manipulative girlfriend wants what's left, and family unity eludes him. His daughters have been at loggerheads ever since Janine was a child television star. At 41, Janine is fragile and reclusive, avoiding both the world at large and that of "fallen celebrity." Amanda functions, but is jealous, divorcing and raising competitively bratty twin girls. To top it all off, Marty's addicted to opioids. Is this a way to kill time, because he's old and nobody cares "how decent a man he'd once been, how dedicated a father he was, or how many Academy Awards he had"? Bunny Small, newly 70, is the rich and famous author of a supremely successful Y.A. series. Biting and cruel, she's been hiding in her London flat, stricken by the writer's block she doesn't believe in, drinking uncontrollably. "Bunny wasn't dead but she wouldn't have minded if she had been." Her only child, Henry, decamped to Los Angeles at 22 after "a life of humiliation and parental neglect," and he's now an art history professor. Bunny explains the separation as her son's "decades-long hissy fit because she'd named the little hero in her novels after him." Where do the orbits of these families intersect? Marty and Bunny, wedded briefly long ago, end up at the same Malibu rehab, setting up a romantic-comedy-style meetcute involving their respective offspring. The oft-mined tropes here would have benefited from more original insights and deeper humor, and the novel's tone never fully settles; still, one wholeheartedly hopes that they all find some measure of future happiness.
