Bitter Tide-Ann Stamos

Bitter Tide
Ann Stamos
Five Star, Apr 2009, $25.95
ISBN: 9781594147821

In 1901 Immigration Commissioner Powderly selects Joseph Hannegan as Superintendent on Ellis Island because of the man’s reputation being "the only honest Irishman in New York". Joseph’s mission is root out corruption especially from the top as Assistant Commissioner McNabb is on the take.

Irish immigrant Maggie Flynn arrives on Ellis and pulls out a gun shooting her fiancé Michael Finnegan in front of a zillion witnesses. She is quickly apprehended while Michael is rushed off the island by two cops and a doctor to a nearby hospital. McNabb knowing Hannegan’s real mission keeps him busy so he has no time to interfere with his extortion and bribery business; thus heeding the advice of his assistant he assigns Hannegan to investigate the hot potato shooting.

Hannegan tabs women’s matron Rachel Bonner, a member of a socially prominent family, to help him. However, the injured man vanishes as does his luggage, and Maggie refuses to tell them anything. Making no progress they follow a clue to Rivington Street where Maggie was to be employed, but barely make it out alive. As the inquiry is going nowhere, Hannegan has issues with his father over the older man’s fierce support of the Irish Free Rule group Clan na Gael while ignoring the country who gave him a chance to earn a living. He also has issues with Maggie who he is attracted to, but detests her superiority airs of what is best for the masses especially when she befriends his sister.

This is an intriguing Ellis Island mystery that looks deep at the European immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the plot remains undecided between a historical mystery and a historical thriller; for instance the social and political issues like corruption on Ellis Island and at Tammany Hall, and first generation pining for the old country while second generation is assimilated overwhelms at times the investigation. The clever Finnegan scenario is deftly handled inside an interesting look at the immigrants who moved to New York to start over.

Harriet Klausner