If we’re going to get to know each other, I ought to start by saying a little about where I’m from. That might seem strange, but if you’re from around here, then you know that in New York, where you come from is everything. It defines your place in the world—your past, present, even your future if you let it. Why, just your name and address tell a stranger pretty much everything he cares to know about you. Not just where you live, but how: what parish you belong to, how much money you’ve got, where your people came from before they were Americans. He can even make a fair guess as to what you do for a living. Your name and address label you a certain type of New Yorker, a creature with particular habits and distinctive plumage, not unlike a species of bird. Black-capped chickadee. Northern mockingbird. Italian fruit vendor. Chinese laundryman. So when I say that my name is Rose Gallagher of 55 Mott Street, well, that’s a whole story right there, and a common one at that. The story of an Irish girl from Five Points.

What do those words conjure in your head? A photograph of some fair-haired, reedy thing leaning out of a tenement window to hang washing on the line while drunks and ragpickers loiter in the alley below? Well, you wouldn’t be far from the mark. But there’s more to me than that slip of a girl, just as there’s more to Five Points than the vice and violence you read about in the papers. Oh, it’s a wretched enough corner of the world, to be sure, but it’s home. And it’s where I learned that if you don’t take care of you and yours, there’s nobody else will do it for you.

Which brings me to the day my employer, one Mr. Thomas Wiltshire of 726 Fifth Avenue, went missing – and everything I knew in the world went spinning down the drain.

I might be just a housemaid, but I’m no fool. I knew straightaway something was wrong, but the coppers didn’t take it seriously at all. Some rounder, they called him. A Champagne Charlie. As though he were just some rich young man-about-town out for a bit of a jaunt. I tried to tell them that he wasn’t that sort at all. He’s meticulous and organized and every inch a gentleman – and he had opera tickets for last night. He would never miss an engagement like that, especially since it was obviously a business matter. I know because the tickets in question were for an opera by Wagner, and I happen to know for a fact that Mr. Wiltshire doesn’t care for Wagner. I also know that he didn’t come home last night, because the only cufflinks missing from his bureau were the onyx ones. He’d worn those on Friday, and he never, ever wears the same pair two days in a row.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that I pay a little more attention to Mr. Wiltshire’s affairs than I ought to. Well, I won’t deny it. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Something terrible has happened to him, I just know it. And if the coppers won’t do anything about it, well. . .

I guess it’s up to me.

You can read more about Rose in In Murder on Millionaires’ Row, the debut historical mystery from the author.

In Murder on Millionaires’ Row, Erin Lindsey’s debut historical mystery, a daring housemaid searches Gilded Age Manhattan for her missing employer and finds a hidden world of magic, ghosts, romance, and Pinkerton detectives.

Rose Gallagher might dream of bigger things, but she’s content enough with her life as a housemaid. After all, it’s not every girl from Five Points who gets to spend her days in a posh Fifth Avenue brownstone, even if only to sweep its floors. But all that changes on the day her boss, Mr. Thomas Wiltshire, disappears. Rose is certain Mr. Wiltshire is in trouble, but the police treat his disappearance as nothing more than the whims of a rich young man behaving badly. Meanwhile, the friend who reported him missing is suspiciously unhelpful. With nowhere left to turn, Rose takes it upon herself to find her handsome young employer.

The investigation takes her from the marble palaces of Fifth Avenue to the sordid streets of Five Points. When a ghostly apparition accosts her on the street, Rose begins to realize that the world around her isn’t at all as it seems―and her place in it is about to change forever.

Purchase Link
# # # # # # # # # # #

Meet the author
Erin Lindsey has lived and worked in dozens of countries around the world, but has only ever called two places home: her native city of Calgary and her adopted hometown of New York. She is the author of the Bloodbound series of fantasy novels from Ace. Murder on Millionaires’ Row is her debut mystery. She divides her time between Calgary and Brooklyn with her husband and a pair of half-domesticated cats.

All comments are welcomed.