num_pages: 253
description: “An elegant page-turner of nineteenth-century detective fiction.”–The Washington Post Book WorldOne rainy morning in 1871 in lower Manhattan, Martin Pemberton a freelance writer, sees in a passing stagecoach several elderly men, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. While trying to unravel the mystery, Pemberton disappears, sending McIlvaine, his employer, the editor of an evening paper, in pursuit of the truth behind his freelancer’s fate. Layer by layer, McIlvaine reveals a modern metropolis surging with primordial urges and sins, where the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit and a conspicuously self-satisfied nouveau-riche ignores the poverty and squalor that surrounds them. In E. L. Doctorow’s skilled hands, The Waterworks becomes, in the words of The New York Times, “a dark moral tale . . . an eloquently troubling evocation of our past.”
language: English
title: The Waterworks
titlecomplete: The Waterworks
genres: American, New York, Historical, Mystery, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Fiction, 19th Century
ratings_count: 3204
places: New York City, New York
publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks