The second book by the author featuring police detective Simon Ziele, set in 1906. The story picks up a few months after the events of the first book, with Ziele brought in by his former NYPD partner to help with the murder of a Broadway actress. The book is a quick read and while I wasn't surprised when the killer was revealed, there were enough plot twists to satisfy me. My main complaint about this and its predecessor, is that NYC of that time period isn't much of a character. The time and place seemed to have been chosen because there are enough similarities to the present day, without all the technology and related complications of our time. Fortunately, that isn't much of a distraction. The characters are likeable and the mystery intriguing, enough to make me want to read the third Ziele book. ( )

This series is entertaining. A cross between The Beekeeper's Apprentice and The Alienist. ( )

This was a good second book in this series, which is set in 1906, and features a police officer in New York City. ( )

There is nothing more frustrating to me as a reader than an interesting idea mangled by an inept writer. I hated so much of this, and yet that kernel of interest kept me going...to a finale worthy of a terrible soap opera. ( )

The careers of New York City detective Simon Ziele and his former partner, Captain Declan Mulvaney, went in remarkably different directions after the tragic death of Ziele’s fiancée in the 1904 General Slocum ferry disaster. While earmarked for bigger things, Ziele moved north of the city to escape the violence, and Mulvaney dug in deeper, heading up the precinct in the most crime-ridden part of New York.
Yet with all of the resources at Mulvaney’s disposal, a puzzling crime compels him to ask his former partner for help. A chorus girl has been found dead on a Broadway stage dressed as the lead. There is no sign of violence. The coroner would call it a suicide, but then she’d be the second actress to die that way in only days.
Following on the heels of Pintoff’s Edgar Award–winning debut, A Curtain Falls is a moody and evocative tale that follows Ziele as he scours the streets in search of a true fiend.

A difficult one, excellent sense of time and place but …I just don’t like the characters in this series, I didn’t care about any of them. I read Gotham a while back and was forgettable to the point that I didn’t even recognise the characters when they appeared in A Curtain Falls.

I thought the story was weak and tedious, the twists and turns increasingly preposterous, characters boring. I don’t think I will be reading The Secret of the White Rose and please don’t compare to Caleb Carr.
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