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Reviewed by P.E. Logan
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Readers everywhere, rise from your chairs, go to the local bookstore and demand more to read than zombie novels that rip off great literature. Go now! Ask your local bookseller for a smart, well-crafted and sophisticated story. Then bring home your copy of 31 Bond Street, a most-satisfying first novel by Ellen Horan.
In these pages you’ll return to New York City in the mid-nineteenth century, when gas lamps flickered and horse hooves clip-clopped on cobblestone streets. This is the setting for the real-life murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell, a life-long bachelor and society dentist, brutally slain in his home/doctor’s office at 31 Bond Street, just as it was on February 1, 1857.
Like E. L. Doctorow and Caleb Carr, Ms. Horan has written a fine, historical novel based on fact. The Burdell murder case, and the trial that followed, captured headlines beyond New York, to the rest of the country and to Europe. The accused: Emma Cunningham, a widow with two teenaged daughters, whom Burdell lured to be his housekeeper. In 1857 there were only two options for a woman on trial for the murder of her employer and paramour: freedom or the gallows. Emma is going to need one heck of a lawyer. Enter Henry Clinton, her attorney and a man with a social consciousness ahead of the times.
A photo editor for magazines and books, Ms. Horan is no stranger to research and draws a deft portrait of the era. You can tell she has thought out her book, as she brings the reader deeper into the novel and daily life in 1857 with each chapter. You can picture the smudged-faced newsboys hawking the latest editions of scintillating trial developments.
You can see Emma, isolated the Tombs prison while awaiting her fate. Her biggest crime is really her incessant class-craving. As a young widow she needs to find steady financial support for herself and to marry off her daughters for the same reason. Back then, this was the main route for women to secure their futures; it was the very meat they would put on the table and the clothes worn on their backs. A ‘decent’ woman needed to marry or go into service as a domestic.
As you read 31 Bond Street you are made aware that the fictionalized Emma, like the real Emma Cunningham, may not draw your greatest sympathies. At the time of the murder, the press made her out to be nothing less than a gold digger. But she is foremost a mother doing her best to protect her daughters. And Dr. Burdell certainly suffered from a Jekyll and Hyde persona. His dark secrets propel the plot.
Ms. Horan paces her story evenly weaving the novel’s many themes together: how Emma and Burdell met, the tension of the trial, the mood in the townhouse before the murder and an unexpected subplot about the racial attitudes in the city on the eve of the Civil War. There are many minor characters to enjoy or hiss at and also great description of Emma’s quotidian tasks as a housekeeper. She must constantly curry favor with Burdell’s cook, parlor maid and coach driver for their allegiances while remaining their mistress and in charge. In a position like that, it’s easy to lose their support at the drop of a hatpin. On the witness stand, their devotion will be tested.
In its day, the Burdell murder case was the crime of the century. Ms. Horan found an old newspaper clipping in a SoHo print shop and was instantly intrigued. The yellowed page featured a crowd gathered at 31 Bond Street. She wondered what could have happened to draw such attention. Archives at the New York Public Library revealed the notorious murder case. It piqued her interest. She enhanced her account with additional and invented characters and the thread of discrimination to reflect even more of the spirit of period.
When I finished the book I was curious about the house and an Internet search showed that 31 Bond is now the Kampo Cultural Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Oh, if those walls could only talk.
At this point you may well ask, ‘Why haven’t I heard of this book?’ Good question. The Advanced Reader’s Editions from the publisher had all the bells and whistles including great cover art, quality paper stock and nice quotes. Also, a charming facsimile of a plaintive note, on Emma’s robin’s egg blue stationery, written while she was under house arrest and sent to Henry Clinton asking for his legal counsel.
Early, pre-publication industry reviews offered promise. But I have yet to see this picked up en masse. Ms. Horan deserves a following. You won’t regret any time spent in the easy chair reading this book. So, I repeat. Go visit your bookseller. Get 31 Bond Street. Go now!
P.E. Logan is communications professional and a writer in New York. She has worked at various adult trade publishing houses including Random House, Putnam, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster for almost three decades. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post and other periodicals.