Right, so I think this is a spectacular historical New York mystery. Well written, well paced, hard to put down. I wish I had started with the first in the series, but I made a mistake.

The down sides here are that as a new copper star in New York, Timothy Wilde is seeing the worst the world can offer, from child prostitution to slave catching, and all the machinations of the political machines. Which is frankly really tough reading. I don't doubt a word of it is based on true stories, and it just hits too hard. It leaves me with too powerful a sorrow to want to read further. So well done for being a writer who can get your poignant history across. I'm sorry I don't have the stomach for it. ( )

I really enjoyed this story, and look forward to reading the first in the series also. The main character, Timothy, was very believable and engaging. What I really liked was the author's very creative use of words to convey not only action but feeling as well. ( )

This is the second in Faye's "copper star" series featuring Timothy Wilde and his wilder older brother Val, two of the first officers of the NYPD (when it was not yet called that) in the early 19th century. The historical aspects of these stories are gripping, grim and enlightening if not uplifting. Tim feels himself overmatched and under-appreciated by his brother, a brilliant complicated man with powerful connections and unsavory habits. In a very different milieu, Tim occasionally plays Watson to Val's Sherlock, but more often plays Sherlock to Val's Mycroft, though it's the elder brother who dabbles excessively in laudanum and "hemp weed". I find Tim a bit tiresome after a couple hundred pages; he needs to gain a bit of self-confidence, but he also needs to stop opposing his brother's advice just because of its source. This story involved the practice of kidnapping free people of color and selling them South into slavery; it's a heart-breaker, but it needed tightening up. It just took much too long and too many words to get to the conclusion. ( )

I find that the best most interesting part of this series is how much people can surprise you, even in the worst situations, for the better. ( )

Excellent narration and a good entry in this story of the beginnings of the NYC police force, known as the Copper Stars. Slave catchers are a danger to all persons of color, including ones that have their free status appropriately documented. A kidnapping turns into murder and the significant involvement of Timothy and brother Val in thwarting these egregious assaults on personal freedoms which are rampant in the class, ethnic and racial strata of this pre Civil War Era. ( )