'Spectacular' Gillian Flynn. THE FATAL FLAME is the stunning third novel in Lyndsay Faye's Edgar Award-nominated series, for fans of Andrew Taylor and Antonia Hodgson's The Devil in the Marshalsea.

A scarred barman turned copper star, the birth of the NYPD, gangs, murder, brothels and bedlam in the dark underworld of nineteenth-century New York.

Timothy Wilde - copper star, tough with a warm heart, learning his craft as a detective.
Valentine Wilde - Timothy's gregarious, glamorous, depraved rogue of a brother.
Mercy Underhill - The intelligent, creative but unstable love of Timothy's life.
Silky Marsh - The beautiful brothel owner whose scheming knows no bounds.

Against the gritty backdrop of the notorious Five Points in 1848, Timothy Wilde is drawn yet again into a disturbing mystery, leading him to the heart of the Bowery girls, the original 'factory girls' in downtown Manhattan.

Someone is starting fires on the streets of New York and Timothy has to unravel a knot of revenge, murder and blackmail if he's to find out who is behind it all and stop them before the whole city goes up in flames...

"Reanimates a menacing 19th-century New York" - The Sunday Times

"Cracking yarn" - Daily Mail

"Vibrant" - New York Times

"Lyndsay Faye began a terrific series of novels with the great New York Fire of 1845. The Fatal Flame picks up the narrative in 1848 with the further adventures of Timothy Wilde, a proud "copper star" in the newly formed police force. In the course of investigating an incident of arson in the shoddy "manufactories" that depend on the sweatshop labor of desperate Irish immigrant girls, Wilde comes to the defense of a radical feminist crusading on behalf of these exploited women" - New York Times Book Review

"As always in this series, the research is impeccable and the period ambiance dazzling" - New York Times