One of the breakout debuts of 2012 - a unique historical thriller set in melting pot New York. In the summer of 1845, following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last formed a Police Department. The potato, a crop that can be trusted to yield reliable nutrition from barren, limited space, had long been the base staple of the Irish tenant farmer. By the summer of 1845, newspapers worldwide had begun to report anxiously that an infestation called blight was laying waste to potato crops throughout Ireland. These twin events would change the city of New York forever. Timothy Wilde is a reluctant, newly minted NYPD. One night while making his rounds, he runs into, literally, a little slip of a girl covered head to toe in blood. When she claims she knows where dozens of bodies are buried, Timothy finds himself tracking down a brutal serial killer seemingly hell bent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment and engaged in a battle for the truth that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life by Lyndsay Faye.