Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye, Book Review

This review of Seven for a Secret appeared previously in the November 2013 Historical Novels Review. This compelling novel has been out a long time, but I happened to pull it from my shelf the other day and was thinking about how much I enjoyed it. Then I noticed I’d never posted this review on my blog, so here you go, a really good, nitty-gritty read.

Outstanding Voice in Seven for a Secret

Set in New York just before the Civil War, Seven for a Secret depicts a mystery involving kidnapping of free Blacks for sale into slavery, murder, the power of the Democratic Party and the related waves of Irish immigrants.  The man who must untangle all these strands is a “copper star” of the newly formed NYPD, Tim Wilde.

Several aspects make Seven for a Secret an excellent read—a complex, unpredictable plot, wildly engaging characters, historical vividness, profound notions of family and friendship—but in my opinion, Faye’s distinctive voice predominates. She’s skilled at the use of slang and styles of speech of the different classes and immigrants of 1846 New York.

But also, by using Tim Wilde as her narrator, Faye has imbued the novel’s voice with his emotionally appealing combination of lost, lonely and cynical joined to down-to-earth, ethically solid, and intellectually curious. Even a description of something as potentially mundane as a public fountain takes on the lively feel of Tim’s character, “Just south of us, the fountain that in the blazing summer had presented a dry bowl littered with tadpole corpses now sprayed malicious plumes of ice water in the faces of passersby…The ways of New York fountains are mysterious. Possibly sadistic.”

Further Reading

If you’d like a completely different take on historical crime fiction set in New York, you might enjoy my review of a zany comedy set in 1920’s New York, You Might As Well Die by J.J. Murphy.

You may purchase a copy of Seven for a Secret on Amazon or on Bookshop.org.