The Lucifer Contract: A Civil War Thriller - Tapa dura

In the midst of a nation at war, Pete Tonneman, a reporter for the New York Evening Post, teams up with a beautiful barmaid to save the Union from being destroyed by Confederate plotters, in a mystery novel set in 1864.

laimed author of The Dutchman and The House on Mulberry Street comes another darkly thrilling mystery rooted in New York's historic past.

In November 1864, Manhattan mirrors the tumult of the Civil War.  Bowery toughs rub shoulders with fashionable theatergoers, crippled veterans beg on the streets, and runaway slaves huddle in Underground Railroad safe houses.  Last year's Draft Riots tore the city apart; many fear another uprising on Election Day.

But a far greater threat hangs, unseen, over New York.  Eight men from Kentucky--one barely old enough to shave--have signed a Confederate blood pact.  Its code name is Lucifer; its mission is to burn this Yankee town to the ground.  Already, one of the men, cutting a Union spy's throat, has left a Lucifer matchstick clenched between the unfortunate's teeth.

Infiltrating the city, the conspirators draw into their orbit many an unsuspecting cit