Customer Reviews

The Midnight Band of Mercy

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Midnight Band of Mercy is an exceptional historical mystery based in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. A self-righteous group of women has taken it upon themselves to put an end to the cat over-population problem in the city which makes good headlines for a Jewish reporter named Greengrass. But the murder of a source leads Greengrass to a far reaching conspiracy involving politicians, power brokers, and the Catholic Church. Life in the big city is meticulously detailed to the point of including musical lyrics, language nuances, and overall succeeds in creating a gritty, realistic portrait of the metropolis. But the most noteworthy feature of the novel is the characters and the lives they lead. It is a well-researched and entertaining novel, one that is well worth the read.

The Midnight Band of Mercy is a wonderful historical novel. Michael Blaine has done deep research into the mind set of the time, not just the manners and clothes, though he gets those details just right, too. His hero, the streetwise Max Greengrass, is admirable, just a little corrupt, smart and capable of self-decpetion when it suits him. In short, a complex human being. When he picks up the thread of his story, four cats killed in cold blood, right on the first page, the writer has you hooked. There is nothing simplistic here. You find yourself admiring some of the more evil characters and loathing some of the most high-minded. There are too many colorful characters to list here, but a few include the old reporter, Biddle, the cantankerous editor, Parnell, the larger than life lawyer, Howe, as well as Max's sister, the vaudevillian, Faye, who is addicted to Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, some kind of narcotic. This novel is fun and frightening and funny all at the same time. It's definitely for anybody who loves fine historical novels.

If you're looking for a good read that doesn't insult your intelligence, and you like great historical fiction, The Midnight Band of Mercy will fill the bill. I was really immersed in this book. The research is great. You feel as if you're really living in New York in 1893. And the story just carries you along. I found myself identifying with the young reporter, Max Greengrass, who is literally writing for his life. When he gets on the trail of a hot story, some weird upper class ladies are killing cats, you're right there with him. The thing I liked the most was that the characters aren't stick figures, they're like living, breathing human beings, warts and all. The inside view of a nineteenth century newspaper was fascinating. There's a great fire scene and the action really builds up by the end. After I put this book down, I kept thinking about it. You won't forget it.

"The Midnight Band of Mercy" starts out like a house on fire. I picked it up in the bookstore and was thoroughly hooked by the first few paragraphs, as well as by the editorial description and reviews. The bizarre story (based on fact), the main character Max Greengrass, the setting, and most of all the "Midnight Band" itself (a group of prim-and-proper women who roam turn-of-the-century NYC ritualistcally murdering cats) is so totally unique, it's a shame the author couldn't keep his story-telling on track.

Halfway through the novel, I was lost and annoyed. A climatic trial is skimmed over swiftly, with a lot of missing details. The enigmatic defendant, who I was dying to know more about, remained only a rough sketch at best. In favor of supporting the major plotline, Blaine devotes too much attention to extraneous players and multiple storylines that cram and dilute the core of the novel. Oddly, this is the same shortcoming that did Caleb Carr in, to whose works "Midnight Band" is so often compared.

Michael Blaine has moved from the the present age of his last excellent novel The Desperate Season, to the New York of the gaslight era, but his concerns for character and place serve him as well in the past as they did in his modern-day upstate New York psychological thriller. The Midnight Band of Mercy manages to serve the conventions of the historical mystery genre without letting those conventions diminish the talents of the author. Blaines' protagonist, Max Greengrass, is a stringer for the New York Herald of 1893 New York and as such he is able to unfold for us the era that gave us the terms "The Tenderloin" and Hell's Kitchen" and the unbelievable but absolutely real movers, shakers, cons, grifters and occasional saints that populated that time. From an odd encounter with a row of dead cats laid out on the street in Grenwich Village, Max follows the chain of evidence and events that lead him from this unsettling sight to an encounter with the real evil that lurks beneath the simply venal surface of the commercial hustle of the city.
Max is not just a transparent device for Blaine to enliven his excellent research through, but a real character with concerns about himself, his friends and his family that never fall into the vapid conventions of the genre. Indeed, all the characters, even those that might have been stock two-dimensional plot conveniences in another's work, are here embodied with real concerns and motivations.
It will be interesting to see if Blaine takes up the challenge to continue the tale of Max Greengrass through a few more adventures in the "mean streets" of New York in another time. This reviewer would love to see the saga of Max and his well drawn and vitally realized world continue.

Max Greengrass is a stringer for the Herald getting paid by the column inch and he thinks he has the perfect story that will get him a permanent job as a Herald reporter. Someone is killing the stray cats in New York City in 1893 and leaving their bodies in a certain pattern beside particular buildings. He tracks the cat killings which are taking place all over the city to THE MIDNIGHT BAND OF MERCY who believe they are treating the starved, feral, and diseased felines in a humane way.

When Max goes to meet an informant who has information about the group he finds the man dead, a bullet destroying much of his head. One of the men who were in the bar where the meeting took place is later found in a barrel, cut up into pieces. Max is sure that there two people weren't killed over dead cats; he starts another investigation which takes him into the city's worst slums where he finds financial predators preying on the city's poor as a way of cutting the undesirables from the population.

THE MIDNIGHT BAND OF MERCY is a riveting historical crime thriller that captures the ambience of New York City during the Gay Nineties of the nineteenth century. The protagonist is a flawed but heroic figure who wants to right wrongs through his journalistic writings. What starts out as a simple human interest story turns into something so depraved and ugly that the hero is willing to risk his life to make sure his findings sees the light of day. Michael Blaine's meticulous research makes this work a fascinating reading experience.

Harriet Klausner

Meticulous historical detail brings you back to 1890's NYC and lands you in the middle of this mystery. Totally engrossing...a great read!

The Midnight Band of Mercy is one of the most absorbing historical novels I've ever read. The plot keeps you turning the pages, and the characters leave a lasting impression. I really felt the young reporter Max Greengrass' desperation to survive and his excitement when he found the story of his life, the strange cat killings that were springing up all over Manahttan. The female characters in the book are varied, complex and intelligent--both of the women Max is involved with, Gretta and Belle, have lives of their own on the page. While so many of these books have women who are predicatable types, The Midnight Band's are refreshingly real. The lawyers Howe and Hummel, evidently real historical figures, were hilarious and scary at the same time. The action builds up to the terrifying revelation at the end. If you liked Time and Again, you'll love this book.

This novel is getting big hype so I picked it up hoping for a good read. But, it's an arduous plod in the first 150 pages before the plot eventually snares the reader. Lots of fascinating 1890's NYC detail which is why I stayed with the novel up to the too-postponed end. Especially as the putative mystery thriller it is touted as, this book has many plot problems. In a mystery, the plot doesn't have to be realistic but it does have to be convincing and this one is not. There are at least three major plot disconnects for which there is nothing in recompense.

Reporter Max Greengrass takes us through 1890s New York with all its period detail: raucous streets of horse-drawn hacks and sinister rag-and-bone men, the graft of Tammany Hall and the collusion of cops and crooked barristers, the seedy pubs and tinny vaudeville acts. Max stumbles onto a mysterious story of cats being slaughtered in the name of kindness and this leads him to a much bigger tale of murder and corruption. Blaine's writing is clean, strong and authentic: We feel like we're experiencing this story through a 19th-century sensibility. Max is principled yet flawed, which is to say he is human, and his struggles with employment, friendship and love transcend his time and strike chords of recognition in all of us.