Night Inspector - Tapa dura

When William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, becomes involved with a Creole prostitute in 1867 New York City, he discovers the continuing underground trade in black people, a case that embroils him with Boston newpaperman Samuel Mordechai and a deputy customs inspector named Herman Melville. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

tory told with insight and powerful language, The Night Inspector chronicles an unforgettable character who navigates the desperate days and sleepless nights of a gilded yet polluted nineteenth-century New York.
        
William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, returns from the battlefields to New York City a hardened man, bent on reversing his fortunes. Much of the lower half of his face was torn apart when he was felled by enemy fire, and he is forced to wear a mask in his postwar life as a New York financial speculator. Despite the solitude of his past life, Bartholomew, once a deadly sniper, now lives among all manner of slum dwellers, thieves, and murderers. As he prowls the city, he becomes involved with Jessie, a Creole prostitute who engages him in a venture that has its origins in the complexities and despair of the Civil War. And he befriends a deputy inspector of customs named Herman Melville--who, largely forgo