Metropolis

Arriving in New York in 1868, our hero, travelling under the name of Georg Geiermeier, becomes a stableboy, tending a circus menagerie, until he is framed for an arson attack and finds himself once again is on the run. He falls into the hands of the Whyos, a gang who communicate with each other by means of a complex system of songs and calls, and is reborn first as an Irish labourer and then as a sewerman, unaware of the part in crime the Whyos have in mind for him. Falling in love with Beatrice, the young Irishwoman the Whyos have selected to teach him to pass as Irish, all seems well, until the gang's leader chooses Beatrice as his 'First Girl' and the plans of the Whyos begin to become clear...Set in a richly realised nineteenth-century New York, a world of crime, corruption, prostitution and disease, Elisabeth Gaffney's debut is a hugely entertaining, irresistibly readable story of love and crime.


Genre: Historical