Thursday, August 29, 2019

Gilded Needles by Michael McDowell

(pb; 1980)

From the back cover

“Welcome to the Black Triangle, New York’s decadent district of opium dens, gambling casinos, drunken sailors, gaudy hookers, and back room abortions. The queen of this unsavory neighborhood is Black Lena Shanks, whose family leads a ring of female criminals─women skilled in the art of cruelty.

“Only a few blocks away, amdist the elegant mansions and lily-white reputations of Gramercy Park and Washington Square, lives Judge James Stallworth. On a crusade to crush Lena’s evil empire, the judge has sentenced three of her family members to death. And now she wants revenge.

“One Sunday, all the Stallworths receive invitations─to their own funerals. Can even the wealth and power of the Stallworth family protect them from Lena’s lust for vengeance?”


Review

Gilded is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It is an intense, cinematic-vivid, character-rich, slow burn of a period piece thriller, one that was near-impossible to set down from its first page to its last. It is worth not only worth reading and owning.

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