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The Waterworks
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New York, 1871. Freelance critic Martin Pemberton claims that he has seen his supposedly dead father riding through lower Manhattan in an omnibus with several other elderly men. When Martin disappears, his editor McIlvaine and the incorruptible police captain Edmund Donne begin an investigation that leads through a city shaped by Boss Tweed, Civil War fortunes, street poverty and the political protection enjoyed by the wealthy.
Their search exposes Dr Sartorius, a brilliant physician conducting experiments intended to prolong the lives of rich old men by exploiting homeless children. Narrated by McIlvaine from a later age, the novel combines detective fiction and gothic horror with a study of the moral corruption beneath New York’s technological confidence and conspicuous wealth.
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