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circularcubes's review against another edition
Honestly, I got 16 pages in and I realized that I just couldn't pretend to be interested in what happens in this book. I powered through the second one because it was only a trilogy and I'm stubborn, but life is short and I have many, many, many other books I want to read as well. The premise of these books seems like I ought to love them, but I just don't. The flowery writing style gets on my nerves, and the characters and their moralizing don't do a thing for me. I didn't entirely hate the first two, they just didn't really click with me, so it's time to call it quits and send this back to the library.
And while I'm here, writing out my thoughts - these covers are pretty bad. I mean, they're mediocre covers, but the first cover was absolutely brilliant, and the follow-up covers have been such a let down.
And while I'm here, writing out my thoughts - these covers are pretty bad. I mean, they're mediocre covers, but the first cover was absolutely brilliant, and the follow-up covers have been such a let down.
jenniekathleen's review against another edition
5.0
Great read
This book was a thrilling and satisfying conclusion to the series. Father's writing is colorful and dramatic. A truly great read!
This book was a thrilling and satisfying conclusion to the series. Father's writing is colorful and dramatic. A truly great read!
thebooktrail88's review against another edition
5.0
Walk the locations in the novels The Fatal Flame Booktrail
This the city that never sleeps – just as well as it certainly needs to keep at least one eye open as an arsonist seems to be on a rampage around the city torching it at will.
New York policing and politics
The peculiarities of mid-19th century NYC politics and the formation of the New York police force are recreated vividly as are the workings of Tammany Hall – the Democratic political machine that dominated NYC politics at the time. Those fighting for high office did just that – fight – and the ‘war’ between them and the people, the police, was dirty, tiring and a battle of wills. Piest for example is described –
“as honest as the frayed cuffs on his frock coat”
Timothy Wilde however is the man to bring the copper stars, the Five Points, the Tomb and the struggle of police officers in such a desperate city to life. With the use of the Flash language, that used by criminals at the time and documented by the chief of police George Matsell, this is a history lesson which fully submerges you in time and place.
New York city 1848..
Newspaper snippets, political documents, and words from various sources open up each chapter giving an insight into the mood, opinion and politics of the time. In the following chapter a window opens up on women’s rights, the subject of mental health and the frightening truth that someone is lighting fires across the city and many people are dying whilst others are in danger.
This is a city of character and it’s a character in its own right – the neighbourhoods, the brothels (mab houses) and manufacturing factories are full of noise, sweat, toil and dirt. Pigs wander the streets munching on anything they find. The tenements and the living conditions of people are symbols of various degrees of poverty -women especially have a raw deal and are constantly under the control of men, wild characters with no regard for their health and safety. Working conditions, if that’s what they can be described as, are not worth the paper they are written on.
Women in the city
Women worked as sewing girls in the Bowery or on the streets and the men who run these places are nasty characters with no morals. Life is one long, harsh struggle for almost everyone and particularly the case if you’re female, Irish or coloured. Working conditions for seamstresses – those enough lucky enough not to be forced into prostitution – were inexistant and conditions unregulated,wages minimal.
Review
This is exactly the kind of book to read if you love to fully immerse yourself into time and place. The level of research that Lyndsay Faye must have done to get such small details as authentic as they come is staggering and despite not knowing much at all about New York history before reading all three of her novels, I feel as if I’ve learned more via her books than any history lesson could have taught me. This books is akin to no ordinarily history lesson however – oh no – but rather like stepping into the past and wandering around the streets, with the odeur of dirt in your nose, the muck on your feet and the fear on the back of your neck.
How fascinating are the early years of the Copper Stars, the growth of the police force, the birth of Flash, the figure of George Matsell. Oh and my new friends – Jim, Mercy, Symmes, Piest, Sally, Dunly, Mrs. Grimshaw, Tim and Val. Please don’t let this be the last in the series, I’m going to miss you all too much.
This needs to be on the big screen right now.
This the city that never sleeps – just as well as it certainly needs to keep at least one eye open as an arsonist seems to be on a rampage around the city torching it at will.
New York policing and politics
The peculiarities of mid-19th century NYC politics and the formation of the New York police force are recreated vividly as are the workings of Tammany Hall – the Democratic political machine that dominated NYC politics at the time. Those fighting for high office did just that – fight – and the ‘war’ between them and the people, the police, was dirty, tiring and a battle of wills. Piest for example is described –
“as honest as the frayed cuffs on his frock coat”
Timothy Wilde however is the man to bring the copper stars, the Five Points, the Tomb and the struggle of police officers in such a desperate city to life. With the use of the Flash language, that used by criminals at the time and documented by the chief of police George Matsell, this is a history lesson which fully submerges you in time and place.
New York city 1848..
Newspaper snippets, political documents, and words from various sources open up each chapter giving an insight into the mood, opinion and politics of the time. In the following chapter a window opens up on women’s rights, the subject of mental health and the frightening truth that someone is lighting fires across the city and many people are dying whilst others are in danger.
This is a city of character and it’s a character in its own right – the neighbourhoods, the brothels (mab houses) and manufacturing factories are full of noise, sweat, toil and dirt. Pigs wander the streets munching on anything they find. The tenements and the living conditions of people are symbols of various degrees of poverty -women especially have a raw deal and are constantly under the control of men, wild characters with no regard for their health and safety. Working conditions, if that’s what they can be described as, are not worth the paper they are written on.
Women in the city
Women worked as sewing girls in the Bowery or on the streets and the men who run these places are nasty characters with no morals. Life is one long, harsh struggle for almost everyone and particularly the case if you’re female, Irish or coloured. Working conditions for seamstresses – those enough lucky enough not to be forced into prostitution – were inexistant and conditions unregulated,wages minimal.
Review
This is exactly the kind of book to read if you love to fully immerse yourself into time and place. The level of research that Lyndsay Faye must have done to get such small details as authentic as they come is staggering and despite not knowing much at all about New York history before reading all three of her novels, I feel as if I’ve learned more via her books than any history lesson could have taught me. This books is akin to no ordinarily history lesson however – oh no – but rather like stepping into the past and wandering around the streets, with the odeur of dirt in your nose, the muck on your feet and the fear on the back of your neck.
How fascinating are the early years of the Copper Stars, the growth of the police force, the birth of Flash, the figure of George Matsell. Oh and my new friends – Jim, Mercy, Symmes, Piest, Sally, Dunly, Mrs. Grimshaw, Tim and Val. Please don’t let this be the last in the series, I’m going to miss you all too much.
This needs to be on the big screen right now.
cook_memorial_public_library's review against another edition
5.0
A 2015 staff favorite highly recommended by Connie, who says this is the "last in the Timothy Wilde trilogy about the start of the NYC Police Department in 1840s and the early days in the women's suffrage movement when awareness of treatment and rights of women is a controversial issue. Timothy Wilde is a fictional character I will miss.''
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sfatal%20flame%20faye__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=gold
Check our catalog: http://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sfatal%20flame%20faye__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=gold
lifeofpie's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoy these books. They are basically the book version of Copper, which is awesome. My only criticism is that I think the author captures Timothy's inner mind as a bit feminine if that makes sense. I don't mean this to be sexist because I think a lot about gender issues. When I mean is, I imagine Timothy to be Kevin Corcoran on Copper, and I don't think Faye quite captures what the "inner thoughts" of a 1850s male copper star in NYC would sound like.
mattnixon's review against another edition
5.0
If The Fatal Flame turns out to be the final installment in the Timothy Wilde series (and I have on good report that it is), Lyndsay Faye has saved the best for last and delivered a dynamic, enormously satisfying conclusion. If you’ve read Gods of Gotham and Seven for a Secret, you’re going to want to run to get The Fatal Flame (out 5/12/15). If you haven’t, and you’re a fan of literary mysteries, historical fiction or just well-written hero stories that immerse you in another world, then what the hell have you been doing? Go get Gods of Gotham immediately! You’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it and Seven for a Secret before you can get to The Fatal Flame.
As with the first two Timothy Wilde installments, Faye crafts a complex, propulsive central mystery that keeps you guessing until the final reveal. Even as the “who” (the arsonist or arsonists who committed the titular “fatal flame”) comes into focus, the “why” is a rewarding surprise. Faye again crafts a twisty, well-paced mystery and, most importantly, plays fair with the reader. While the turns are unexpected, Faye never cheats: the clues and motivations are slyly seeded throughout and pay off when “copper star” Timothy Wilde puts them together for us.
These are more than just good mysteries, however. Lyndsay Faye’s Wilde Trilogy transcends genre in two ways: in the elegance and impact of its historical setting and in the emotional richness of its world-building.
When describing Faye’s work to the unfamiliar, I always make the point that she is a master of elegantly weaving rich historical detail and context into the story. She avoids the easy and all-too-familiar crutch of having Captain Exposition enter a scene to explain the background context and its significance in order to explain a character’s actions.
Faye paints such an evocative picture of 1840’s New York City that we’re able to understand and feel the human-scale consequences of the culture and institutions that comprise the era. We get to understand what it means to be a woman at that time, where life options are essentially binary: marry or struggle not to starve to death. In previous books, Faye has focused on the plight of the Irish immigrant and the “freed” African American in that time. Works of historical fiction frequently have characters that play out and/or stand in as archetypes and symbols of a conflict of the period. Faye creates fully-fleshed characters that act within and outside the culture’s framework. These characters are humans, not symbols. This allows for complexity and results, in Faye’s hands, in true emotional payoffs.
Throughout the three books, Faye populates the world of Timothy Wilde with complex, authentic, human-sized characters. The cumulative effect of this work pays off mightily in The Fatal Flame. Because each recurring character has been painted throughout the series with nuance and depth and love, there are genuine, affecting emotional stakes on the line. There were a half-dozen times or more in Flame where I caught myself tense and worried for the fates of different characters.
Three-quarters of the way through the book, I was struck with the realization of just how many characters in this world that was I deeply invested in—Bird Daly, Elena Boehm, Jacob Piest, Gentleman Jim Playfair, Valentine Wilde (of course), even the fantastically, singularly awful Silkie Marsh. I liken this deep bench of richly and precisely drawn characters to Mad Men. It’s appropriately synchronous, I suppose, that The Fatal Flame, seemingly the final chapter of the Timothy Wilde story, hits shelves the same week as Mad Men’s series finale.
The Fatal Flame is a terrific read and a tremendously satisfying conclusion to Timothy Wilde’s story. Despite the 30-degree weather, spring must have been in full bloom because my eyes watered throughout the last few pages. Flame’s final page is one of the loveliest endings to a book I can remember and thrills me to think what Lyndsay Faye has in store for us next. Whatever it is, I’ll be there.
As with the first two Timothy Wilde installments, Faye crafts a complex, propulsive central mystery that keeps you guessing until the final reveal. Even as the “who” (the arsonist or arsonists who committed the titular “fatal flame”) comes into focus, the “why” is a rewarding surprise. Faye again crafts a twisty, well-paced mystery and, most importantly, plays fair with the reader. While the turns are unexpected, Faye never cheats: the clues and motivations are slyly seeded throughout and pay off when “copper star” Timothy Wilde puts them together for us.
These are more than just good mysteries, however. Lyndsay Faye’s Wilde Trilogy transcends genre in two ways: in the elegance and impact of its historical setting and in the emotional richness of its world-building.
When describing Faye’s work to the unfamiliar, I always make the point that she is a master of elegantly weaving rich historical detail and context into the story. She avoids the easy and all-too-familiar crutch of having Captain Exposition enter a scene to explain the background context and its significance in order to explain a character’s actions.
Faye paints such an evocative picture of 1840’s New York City that we’re able to understand and feel the human-scale consequences of the culture and institutions that comprise the era. We get to understand what it means to be a woman at that time, where life options are essentially binary: marry or struggle not to starve to death. In previous books, Faye has focused on the plight of the Irish immigrant and the “freed” African American in that time. Works of historical fiction frequently have characters that play out and/or stand in as archetypes and symbols of a conflict of the period. Faye creates fully-fleshed characters that act within and outside the culture’s framework. These characters are humans, not symbols. This allows for complexity and results, in Faye’s hands, in true emotional payoffs.
Throughout the three books, Faye populates the world of Timothy Wilde with complex, authentic, human-sized characters. The cumulative effect of this work pays off mightily in The Fatal Flame. Because each recurring character has been painted throughout the series with nuance and depth and love, there are genuine, affecting emotional stakes on the line. There were a half-dozen times or more in Flame where I caught myself tense and worried for the fates of different characters.
Three-quarters of the way through the book, I was struck with the realization of just how many characters in this world that was I deeply invested in—Bird Daly, Elena Boehm, Jacob Piest, Gentleman Jim Playfair, Valentine Wilde (of course), even the fantastically, singularly awful Silkie Marsh. I liken this deep bench of richly and precisely drawn characters to Mad Men. It’s appropriately synchronous, I suppose, that The Fatal Flame, seemingly the final chapter of the Timothy Wilde story, hits shelves the same week as Mad Men’s series finale.
The Fatal Flame is a terrific read and a tremendously satisfying conclusion to Timothy Wilde’s story. Despite the 30-degree weather, spring must have been in full bloom because my eyes watered throughout the last few pages. Flame’s final page is one of the loveliest endings to a book I can remember and thrills me to think what Lyndsay Faye has in store for us next. Whatever it is, I’ll be there.
we_are_all_mad_here26's review against another edition
3.0
A good (if over-long) end to something you don't see every day - a detective series that finishes after only three installments.
thebooktrail88's review against another edition
5.0
Walk the locations in the novels The Fatal Flame Booktrail
This the city that never sleeps – just as well as it certainly needs to keep at least one eye open as an arsonist seems to be on a rampage around the city torching it at will.
New York policing and politics
The peculiarities of mid-19th century NYC politics and the formation of the New York police force are recreated vividly as are the workings of Tammany Hall – the Democratic political machine that dominated NYC politics at the time. Those fighting for high office did just that – fight – and the ‘war’ between them and the people, the police, was dirty, tiring and a battle of wills. Piest for example is described –
“as honest as the frayed cuffs on his frock coat”
Timothy Wilde however is the man to bring the copper stars, the Five Points, the Tomb and the struggle of police officers in such a desperate city to life. With the use of the Flash language, that used by criminals at the time and documented by the chief of police George Matsell, this is a history lesson which fully submerges you in time and place.
New York city 1848..
Newspaper snippets, political documents, and words from various sources open up each chapter giving an insight into the mood, opinion and politics of the time. In the following chapter a window opens up on women’s rights, the subject of mental health and the frightening truth that someone is lighting fires across the city and many people are dying whilst others are in danger.
This is a city of character and it’s a character in its own right – the neighbourhoods, the brothels (mab houses) and manufacturing factories are full of noise, sweat, toil and dirt. Pigs wander the streets munching on anything they find. The tenements and the living conditions of people are symbols of various degrees of poverty -women especially have a raw deal and are constantly under the control of men, wild characters with no regard for their health and safety. Working conditions, if that’s what they can be described as, are not worth the paper they are written on.
Women in the city
Women worked as sewing girls in the Bowery or on the streets and the men who run these places are nasty characters with no morals. Life is one long, harsh struggle for almost everyone and particularly the case if you’re female, Irish or coloured. Working conditions for seamstresses – those enough lucky enough not to be forced into prostitution – were inexistant and conditions unregulated,wages minimal.
Review
This is exactly the kind of book to read if you love to fully immerse yourself into time and place. The level of research that Lyndsay Faye must have done to get such small details as authentic as they come is staggering and despite not knowing much at all about New York history before reading all three of her novels, I feel as if I’ve learned more via her books than any history lesson could have taught me. This books is akin to no ordinarily history lesson however – oh no – but rather like stepping into the past and wandering around the streets, with the odeur of dirt in your nose, the muck on your feet and the fear on the back of your neck.
How fascinating are the early years of the Copper Stars, the growth of the police force, the birth of Flash, the figure of George Matsell. Oh and my new friends – Jim, Mercy, Symmes, Piest, Sally, Dunly, Mrs. Grimshaw, Tim and Val. Please don’t let this be the last in the series, I’m going to miss you all too much.
This needs to be on the big screen right now.
This the city that never sleeps – just as well as it certainly needs to keep at least one eye open as an arsonist seems to be on a rampage around the city torching it at will.
New York policing and politics
The peculiarities of mid-19th century NYC politics and the formation of the New York police force are recreated vividly as are the workings of Tammany Hall – the Democratic political machine that dominated NYC politics at the time. Those fighting for high office did just that – fight – and the ‘war’ between them and the people, the police, was dirty, tiring and a battle of wills. Piest for example is described –
“as honest as the frayed cuffs on his frock coat”
Timothy Wilde however is the man to bring the copper stars, the Five Points, the Tomb and the struggle of police officers in such a desperate city to life. With the use of the Flash language, that used by criminals at the time and documented by the chief of police George Matsell, this is a history lesson which fully submerges you in time and place.
New York city 1848..
Newspaper snippets, political documents, and words from various sources open up each chapter giving an insight into the mood, opinion and politics of the time. In the following chapter a window opens up on women’s rights, the subject of mental health and the frightening truth that someone is lighting fires across the city and many people are dying whilst others are in danger.
This is a city of character and it’s a character in its own right – the neighbourhoods, the brothels (mab houses) and manufacturing factories are full of noise, sweat, toil and dirt. Pigs wander the streets munching on anything they find. The tenements and the living conditions of people are symbols of various degrees of poverty -women especially have a raw deal and are constantly under the control of men, wild characters with no regard for their health and safety. Working conditions, if that’s what they can be described as, are not worth the paper they are written on.
Women in the city
Women worked as sewing girls in the Bowery or on the streets and the men who run these places are nasty characters with no morals. Life is one long, harsh struggle for almost everyone and particularly the case if you’re female, Irish or coloured. Working conditions for seamstresses – those enough lucky enough not to be forced into prostitution – were inexistant and conditions unregulated,wages minimal.
Review
This is exactly the kind of book to read if you love to fully immerse yourself into time and place. The level of research that Lyndsay Faye must have done to get such small details as authentic as they come is staggering and despite not knowing much at all about New York history before reading all three of her novels, I feel as if I’ve learned more via her books than any history lesson could have taught me. This books is akin to no ordinarily history lesson however – oh no – but rather like stepping into the past and wandering around the streets, with the odeur of dirt in your nose, the muck on your feet and the fear on the back of your neck.
How fascinating are the early years of the Copper Stars, the growth of the police force, the birth of Flash, the figure of George Matsell. Oh and my new friends – Jim, Mercy, Symmes, Piest, Sally, Dunly, Mrs. Grimshaw, Tim and Val. Please don’t let this be the last in the series, I’m going to miss you all too much.
This needs to be on the big screen right now.
mrbadger63's review against another edition
4.0
Sadly, this is the weakest of the three as far as story and excitement goes(a bit heavy on the foreshadowing with a lackluster payoff), but the writing and characters are still so superb that you can't help but get lost in Faye's pre-Civil War New York which certainly seems well-researched and lovingly crafted. It's not easy closing the last book and leaving these people and the city behind.