The characters are not engaging, the narrator is too full of the author's voice. Statements like: "our man" and "I wouldn't do that to his fate" were annoying and kept disrupting the pace of the story. Gaffney went above and beyond researching the history of New York, and its seedy underbelly. She unfortunately couldn't compose all of the information into a compelling novel. There was too much "telling" and not enough "showing." Pages went on with narration, but none of which added to the plot or characters. I read about 60 pages, the first 7 chapters before calling it quits. From reading the other reviews, I'm glad I stopped here.