Bøger af Maan Meyers

IIt's 1899, and the new century is almost here. Change is everywhere. Kinescope parlors are open, there are plans to build a bridge connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn, and automobiles are claiming the space that belonged to the horse.With the digging of a rapid transit system about to begin, land speculation is intense. Police Detective John "Dutch" Tonneman, whose involvement with murder was the basis for the Maan Meyers mystery The House on Mulberry Street, is home from serving with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish American War. He's eager to convince the lovely Jewish immigrant and photographer Esther Breslau to marry him rather than her mentor, Oswald Cook.Dutch and his cousin, Detective Bo Clancy, are investigating a series of brutal stiletto murders, beginning with that of Delia Swann, a young prostitute in Madame Sophie's establishment. Sophie asks about Delia's missing heart-shaped locket and steers Dutch and Bo to Esther, probably the last person to see Delia alive. Esther, who has been working on her new project-photographs of prostitutes-has taken two photographs of Delia. One shows Delia wearing the locket. After the cop who found Delia's body is murdered, it quickly becomes apparent that the murderer is looking for the locket. Esther is in grave danger.Appearing in this wild ride through turn-of- the-century New York are a murderous organ grinder; an Italian detective named Petrosino; Wong, Oz Cook's enigmatic Chinese houseman; Flora Cooper, a New York Herald reporter; Jack West and Little Jack Meyers, private investigators; cops, robbers, street urchins, land speculators, New York aristocracy, Tammany Hall politicians, and various and sundry early mafia organizations like the Black Hand. THE ORGAN GRINDER is a fast-paced historical thriller, a must-read for every history buff in America.

The year is 1775, a full century after The Dutchman, and Sheriff Pieter Tonneman's descendants are well established in the now-thriving metropolis of New-York.History is being made in the political turmoil of colonial America, but in New-York murder becomes the focus of everyone's attention when a savagely decapitated body is discovered.After a long absence, John Tonneman returns from medical studies in London to his native city, now torn between Tories and Patriots as the colonies race headlong into armed rebellion.Resolved to steer clear of politics, the earnest young physician finds himself drawn into the violence by his growing feelings for an adventurous young woman from the Sephardic Jewish community.A second, horrifying murder reveals that there is a killer on the loose with a taste for redheaded women.Hunting the mad killer, Tonneman makes a connection between the dead woman and a plot to assassinate General George Washington.Another woman is murdered and the General barely escapes with his life as John Tonneman pursues a killer and uncovers a conspiracy through the jumbled rush of events that culminate in the momentous July of 1776.

It is the winter of 1808. Thomas Jefferson is President. John Tonneman, the young physician whose involvement with murder was the basis for Maan Meyers's previous mystery, The Kingsbridge Plot, is now past sixty. Surely this should be a time to contemplate retirement and enjoy the pleasures of life with his beloved wife, Mariana, and their three children.But Mariana is unaccountably angry and irritable, and their eldest, Peter, is restless, rebellious, and drinking too much. Then a corpse is discovered in the Collect-the pond that had for so long delivered fresh, sweet water to the residents of New-York. Peter's boss, the Controller of the Collect Company, has disappeared, as has Peter himself. And there's cash missing as well.The corpse, fear for his son, and a long-buried skull draw John Tonneman into another murder, as he joins his friend Jake Hays, High Constable of the City of New-York, in trying to track down the killer-or killers.What begins as a potential tragedy for the Tonneman family ultimately draws them closer together: young Peter finds his true calling in police work and his true love in Jake Hays's lovely widowed cousin; John finds the solution to a pair of murders more than thirty years old; and Mariana and John rediscover one another.The High Constable delivers not only an intricately plotted mystery but also a vivid glimpse of historical New-York and a fully drawn portrait of complex family relationships.