In the Shadow of Gotham
Stefanie Pintoff
Minotaur Books, 2009
U.S. trade paper, reprint
ISBN 0312628129
400 pages; $14.99

Stefanie Pintoff has just won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author for In the Shadow of Gotham, and it is a well-deserved win. This historical mystery, set in the very early 20th century, is in many ways about new crime investigation techniques just being born: fingerprinting and profiling, most obviously, but basically the whole idea of a scientific approach to figuring out whodunit. The book is populated with interesting characters, including several strong women in an age when those women who agitated for the right to vote were considered odd, and those who wanted a career downright unnatural. All of these historical elements are folded into a strong plot with a genuine mystery that challenges the reader into beating the detective protagonist to the solution.

Detective Simon Ziele has just transferred from the New York Police Department to a smaller department in Dobson, just north of the city, in the wake of the loss of his fiancée in a ferry disaster. Simon has some newfangled ideas about criminal investigation, which his boss doesn’t much approve of. But those ideas come in handy when a murder occurs in the quiet town. Sarah Wingate, a visitor to a prominent and wealthy family, was murdered in a particularly brutal fashion, and seemingly without motive. It is a challenge that the small police department, firmly mired in the 19th century, does not seem equipped to solve.

But Ziele proceeds with his investigation in ways unexpected by his contemporaries. Most particularly, he joins forces with Alistair Sinclair, a professor at Columbia Law School, who has been studying the psychology or criminal behavior based on the work of Eugene Vidocq in France. Together, they hope to work backwards from the crime to create a profile – though they don’t phrase it that way – of the killer. In fact, Sinclair believes he already knows who committed the crime.

It is, of course, much more complicated than that. But the book is a fascinating study in the development of criminal investigation. It is fun for a fan of criminal procedurals like “CSI” and “Criminal Minds” to watch how the procedures now taken almost for granted began in the minds of early psychologists and law enforcement officials to become the science that solves many of today’s crimes.

While that is what fascinated me most about this book, there is plenty else here for whatever suits the reader’s fancy. Sinclair is skillfully conceived, a combination of self-interest and scholarly study that seems almost contradictory. Ziele is an interesting man attempting to find his place in society. The victim is a fascinating woman, a mathematician of surprising promise in a time when women and mathematics were considered to be virtual opposites. And I greatly enjoyed Isabella Sinclair, Alistair’s daughter-in-law, a young widow who seems likely to be Ziele’s love interest as a series – and it does appear to be a series, as A Curtain Falls, starring Detective Ziele, is to be released on May 11 – develops.

In the Shadow of Gotham is a very promising first novel from Pintoff, a graduate of Columbia University Law School with a Ph.D. in literature from New York University. I can’t wait to read what she comes up with next.