Friday Focus: Weekend Reads

 

 It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by My Head is Full of Books, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
  

Today I'm featuring Murder on Oak Street by I.M. Foster. The excerpts shared are from an eBook provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

Book Beginning:  Prologue

Friday, April 3, 1902

Cornelius Desmond crept up the staircase of the crumbling tenement. Each step creaked and moaned with the pressure of his heavy boots until, at times, he felt sure he would plunge through to the floor below.

********************  

56% of eBook:  "He's helped you before, then?"

"Yes, on occasion." He glanced nervously around the small restaurant, as if gauging whether or not he could make a break for it.

********************  

My thoughts: This is the first book in a new historical mystery series set during New York's Guilded Age. The story brings to vivid life the ruthlessness of a local group of businessmen and their associates, some of whom will stop at nothing--including murder--to obtain wealth and status. Society's better angels--in the form of a young doctor and librarian--seek justice and accountability in the face of dastardly deeds. The book's many suspects, motives, and red herrings held my attention and kept me guessing who was responsible for the murders until the last few pages.

********************  

From Goodreads:  New York, 1904. After two years as a coroner’s physician for the city of New York, Daniel O'Halleran is more frustrated than ever. What’s the point when the authorities consistently brush aside his findings for the sake of expediency? So when his fiancée leaves him standing at the altar on their wedding day, he takes it as a sign that it's time to move on and eagerly accepts an offer to assist the local coroner in the small Long Island village of Patchogue.

Though the coroner advises him life on Long Island is far more subdued than that of the city, Daniel hasn’t been there a month when the pretty librarian, Kathleen Brissedon, asks him to look into a two-year-old murder case that took place in the city. Oddly enough, the case she’s referring to was the first one he ever worked on, and the verdict never sat right with him.

Eager for the chance to investigate it anew, Daniel agrees to look into it in his spare time, but when a fresh murder occurs in his own backyard, he can’t shake his gut feeling that the two cases are somehow connected. Can he discover the link before another life is taken, or will murder shake the peaceful South Shore village once again?

*******************

This Friday Focus: Weekend Reads post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com. It cannot be republished without attribution.