Francis Spufford

This is a noir murder mystery, set in the 1920s in an alternate history where the Native American city of Cahokia was never abandoned, and was also never fully integrated into the United States. The city is still ruled by Native Americans. The main character is detective Barrow, a large Native American man who is initially known more for his brawl than his brains, but circumstances require him to put his intelligence to use. He did not grow up in Cahokia, so a lot of Cahokia's ways are show more foreign to him, which makes him a good character for the reader to follow, so that we can learn about Cahokia's culture as he does.

As a noir mystery, this book is fantastic: the mystery is truly surprising, with lots of twists and turns that end up involving a lot of powerful people. On top of that, the world-building is thoughtful, thorough, and adds extra dimensions to the mystery. The characters are well-developed and lively. Parts of the book get a little bit sappy, but that's fitting with the noir genre. This is one of those delightful books that is not only very entertaining and engaging, but also very well-written. show less

It's a rainy evening in the fall of 1746 when Mr. Smith arrives in the bustling little city of New York. He's immediately a man of mystery: he arrives at a counting house on Golden Hill street with an order for a thousand pounds, an almost unimaginable fortune in the Colonies. Is he a fraudster? An eccentric, wealthy businessman? What is his business in New York, and why is he so hesitant to talk about it?

I can't quite remember how this book got on my radar (a conference speaker some years show more ago, perhaps?), but I'm glad I finally got to it. The ups and downs of Smith's trip to New York and the mystery of his business there kept me intrigued the whole way through, as well as the turbulent, spiky romance between him and Tabitha, daughter of the counting-house on Golden Hill. I did guess at one of the twists from a dropped clue, but was still generally surprised at how things turned out. The book does have some flaws -- for one thing, the narrator is revealed at the end, but that person would have had no way of knowing about certain conversations and events that are recorded. Smith is also amazingly forward-thinking and tolerant for his time. The audiobook narration is likewise good but flawed, with a couple of mispronounced words and a few awkward bits of phrasing where the last word of a sentence gets tagged on as an afterthought. Still, I'd recommend both the book and the audiobook to readers who enjoy historical fiction set in this era. show less

This book was recommended to me in a roundabout way by a friend of a friend (probably because I'm a New Yorker) and I'm so very grateful that it was brought to my attention as it is not a book I would ever have thought to pick up on my own.

Richard Smith arrives in a fledgling New York in 1746 with a note worth £1000 (or 1,738 pounds New-York money). The city isn't much more than a small town with a population of just 7,000. The note is worth a fortune and young Smith is a complete stranger show more to Mr Lovell, the merchant to whom Smith has presented the note of exchange. Mr Smith refuses to expand on who he is, what his business in NY is, or how he came to have such an incredible sum. Thus they agree to postpone the payment until Lovell can write to London to confirm that Smith is not a fraud.

In that time, we are taken on wild romp with Smith as he navigates the streets and politics of this small city and its inhabitants. There are celebrations and near death escapades, an escape involving ropes and rooftops, there is theft and forbidden love and prison murder and mayhem and there are secrets abounding.

Francis Spufford touches upon myriad serious topics of the era but all within the bounds of an epic story. Plot twists abound and never do they feel contrived. And when the mystery of our intrepid Richard Smith is finally revealed at the very last pages it feel so right and so natural and so damn fulfilling. show less

This book starts with a painfully vivid slow-motion description of a bomb hitting a London department store during the Blitz and killing several children. Then the book asks, "What if the bomb hadn't hit there, and those children had lived?" The rest of the book jumps ahead to several moments in those children's lives, giving us biographies of them through these snapshots. This is also a walk through history, giving us snapshots of the music industry, the labor movement, neo-nazism, and the show more gentrification of a fictional run-down London neighborhood.

As always, Spufford's writing is exceptional, and the book is worth reading for the prose alone. The characters are complex and believable.

The book struggles to make a point, or to have a plot, but I think that actually is the point. Ultimately, these characters' lives are fairly prosaic. They have their ups and downs. They make mistakes, sometimes they make amends. Some of them learn and grow, some of them don't. They don't have tidy conflict-and-resolution arcs, because that's not what real lives are like.

This is ultimately a book for people who like reading good writing. show less