The Woman on Pier 29 — David DeLee

In 1845, New York City formed its own paid Municipal Police force, modeled after Sir Robert Peel's London Metropolitan Police. Not long after, a young woman's body is discovered floating in the waters of the East River. Called in to investigate, Sergeant Daniel Kilmurray's attempts to identify the poor victim and find the killer take him and patrolman William Hamon from the briny piers of the lower East Side to the spectacular opulence of the Park Hotel, owned by millionaire John Jacob Astor, from seedy tenement basement bars to unsavory boarding houses where the most despicable of crimes are committed, during a period of history when modern policing is in its infancy.