Set at the turn of the 20th century, the story of the father of New York City, his mysterious assassination and his hidden life, for fans of Golden Hill and Kavalier and Clay

The 'Father of Greater New York' is dead. Shot outside his Park Avenue mansion in the year of our Lord, 1903. In the hour of his death, will the truth of his life finally break free? Born to a struggling farming family in 1820, Andrew Haswell Green was a self-made man who reshaped Manhattan, built Central Park and turned New York into a modern metropolis. Now, at eighty-three, when he thought the world could hold no more surprises, he is murdered. As the detective assigned to the case traces his ghost across the city, other spectres appear: a wealthy courtesan; a broken-hearted man in a bowler hat; and an ambitious politician, Samuel, whose lifelong friendship was a source of joy and frustration. In a life of industry and restraint, where is the space for love? As restlessly inventive and absorbing as its protagonist, The Great Mistake is the story of a city, and a singular man, transformed by longing.

"A highly satisfying mix of mystery and character portrait, revealing the constrained heart beneath the public carapace." - Kirkus

"Elegiac and elegant, inviting and refined. The reader is immersed in [a] world that grows more dense with longing, regret and foreclosed possibilities... Lee's prose is thick with an emotional awareness that recalls the writing of Henry James" - The Times

"Not a novel of grand deeds, but of grand imagination... quietly but intently ambitious" - Guardian

"Seriously entertaining" - Sunday Times

"[A] stylish, finely wrought mashup of mystery and history, which paints a dynamic portrait of both man and metropolis" - Mail on Sunday