The Waterworks

The Waterworks is a classic Gothic detective story set in 1870s New York City. Throughout the book, E.L. Doctorow references real-life New Yorkers like Boss Tweed, but unlike in Ragtime, they are distant enough to the story that they don’t become intrusive. Some of the best parts of the book are Doctorow’s commentary on this corrupt and formative period in NYC history: “As a people we practiced excess. Excess in everything — pleasure, gaudy display, endless toil, and death. Vagrant children slept in the alleys. Ragpicking was a profession…All hell seemed to be breaking loose. The collapse of a system, even a system that subjugates them, unsettles folks… we were going to have to face up to the truth, all of us who made up this town of calamitous life.”