ALLAN LEVINE
ALLAN LEVINE is a writer, historian and educator and the author of nine books, both fiction and non-fiction.
He attended universities in Winnipeg and Toronto, receiving a Ph.D. in history from the University of Toronto in 1985.
Since 1984, he has taught at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School.
He is married with two children.
Fiction by Allan Levine:
He is the creator of the SAM KLEIN MYSTERY SERIES that features turn-of-the-century Winnipeg Jewish detective Sam Klein. The third book in the series, The Bolshevik’s Revenge was published in November 2002.
The first in the series was The Blood Libel, published in October 1997 by Great Plains Publications of Winnipeg. It was nominated for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Arthur Ellis First Mystery Novel Award (sponsored by the Crime Writers of Canada). It won the Margaret McWilliams Medal for Best Historical Fiction (for books published between 1997-1999). The Blood Libel has also been optioned for a feature film.
The second Klein novel, Sins of the Suffragette was published in the fall of 2000 and was short-listed for the Carol Shields City of Winnipeg Book Award and the Margaret McWilliams Medal for Best Historical Fiction.
The Blood Libel was published in Germany in 2002 by the BTB-Random House) as Mit falscher zunge.
Sins of the Suffragette or Die Sünden Der Suffragetten followed in early September 2004, also by BTB-Random House. The author did a week of promotion in five cities in Germany during the last week of September 2004, including a reading at the Berlin International Literature Festival. He appeared at Bouchercon, the International Mystery Book Convention in Toronto October 7-10, 2004.
His most recent non-fiction book is The Devil in Babylon: Fear of Progress and the Birth of Modern Life--a popular look at moral issues between 1890 and 1930 with chapters on attitudes about sex, science, religion, innovation, and Hollywood--published by McClelland and Stewart, Toronto in April 2005. The Devil in Babylon was short-listed for the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year and the Manitoba Isbister Best Non-Fiction Book. It was released in the U.S. by M&S and distributed by Random House in April 2006.
Other titles include: Scattered Among the Peoples: The Jewish Diaspora in Ten Portraits published by McClelland & Stewart in 2002. It was published in an expanded version as Scattered Among the Peoples: The Jewish Diaspora in Twelve Portraits in the United States by The Overlook Press, New York and in Britain by Duckworth Publishers, London. It was released in trade paper in the fall of 2004. And, Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival during the Second World War, published in 1998 by Stoddart, Toronto.
Scattered Among the Peoples was short-listed for the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year and the Manitoba Isbister Best Non-Fiction Book.
Fugitives of the Forest won the 1999 Canadian Yad Vashem Award in Holocaust History and was short-listed for the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year. It was released in the United States in September 1999 and was a selection of the Traditions Book Club.
EVIL OF THE AGE
“Levine has an easy style and can pack a wealth of information into a brief essay.” ‑ Publisher’s Weekly
EVIL OF THE AGE
The Charles
St. Clair Chronicles
Volume One Of A New Historical Mystery Series
By Allan Levine
Political corruption, Abortion and... A dead body discovered inside a trunk at Hudson depot…
THE SUMMER OF 1871 in New York City is hot and humid. The city is gripped by two seemingly separate events. The first is the discovery of a beautiful young woman’s body stuffed inside a trunk at the Hudson railway depot. The second involves Victor Fowler, Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, and the ‘Boss’ of what is popularly referred to as ‘The Ring’. This is a small clique which includes: Governor “Dandy” Archibald Krupp, Fowler’s man at the State Assembly in Albany; Mayor Thomas “The Prince” Emery, an opportunist of the worst variety; Slimy” Bob James, the cunning and sly City Comptroller; and Isaac “The Wizard” Harrison, the City Chamberlain, who is possibly the most treacherous of the “Ring Rascals.”
Born into a lower middle class Manhattan family, Fowler, through hard work, guile and deception, has struggled to build a commanding political empire that controls every aspect of life in New York. He is one of the largest property owners in the city, has the support of some members of the upper crust as well as the ruffians and thugs who frequent the saloons down by the waterfront. His wife is Ellen, a lovely, young woman, who is childless and may be addicted to laudanum.
Despite his accomplishments and acquisitions, Fowler is rarely satisfied and he is about to embark on a daring scheme to expand his empire beyond New York, perhaps into Washington, D.C. itself.
One of the few stumbling blocks is the constant public criticism from Fox’s Weekly, a widely read and influential journal. At the moment, Fowler’s two great adversaries are Tom Fox, the wily publisher of the Weekly and his celebrated writer, Charles St. Clair, who Fox recently wooed from the Times. An unknown informer is providing St. Clair with confidential information on kickbacks and questionable contracts doled out by Fowler. And in a series of recent articles, St. Clair has been cataloguing the Ring’s multitude of sins--much to Fowler’s anger.
St. Clair is 35-years old, lean and trim. He is a talented writer, but a lousy faro and poker player and is in debt to a notorious gambler named Captain Jack Martin. He is also a widower—his wife Caroline died two years ago, the victim of a botched abortion. Indeed, the only thing he detests more than Fowler and the Ring are the abortionists—particularly Madame Philippe.
Popularly referred to as “Madame Killer,” Madame Philippe is as wealthy as Fowler. She also lives in a mansion on Fifth Avenue and is seemingly above the law. (In 1871 New York State law did not allow abortion for women who were past quickening: the stage of pregnancy in which the movement of the foetus can be felt. But at the time it was impossible for doctors or midwives to determine when that was.)
St. Clair is keen to be involved in Fox’s scheme to expose Madame Philippe’s secrets for an article to be entitled “Evil of the Age.” Fox has even hired Ruth Cardaso, an actress from San Francisco to assist in this journalistic undercover operation. The beautiful Miss Cardaso instantly intrigues St. Clair, but he soon learns that she is not all who she claims to be.
As the plans are being finalized, the gruesome discovery of body in a trunk at the Hudson Railway depot is made. It is eventually determined that the woman is Miss Lucy Maloney, a “kept woman” who resides at the palatial Fifth Avenue Hotel. A preliminary investigation by Detective Seth Murray (St. Clair’s brother-in-law) leads to the arrest of Madame Philippe, who claims she is innocent. According to Madame Philippe, Miss Maloney did come to see her for an abortion, but then left her office before any procedure was done.
Few people believe her, including St. Clair who has little doubt that she is guilty. He is satisfied when she is convicted and sentenced to hang. Yet soon an attempt on his life and several key pieces of new evidence lead him to rethink his position. After he meets with Madame Philippe at the Tombs prison, he has a slight change of heart and accepts that she is not the monster he believed her to be. Inexplicably, he begins his quest to discover the details of Lucy Maloney’s life—a quest that takes him from the brothels on Wooster and Greene, south of Houston (present day SoHo) to the seedy and dangerous saloons on Water Street to the posh mansions on Fifth Avenue.
With the hanging of Madame Philippe fast approaching, St. Clair attends the annual Summer Ball given by Victor Fowler and his wife Ellen, where the startling truth of the ‘trunk mystery’ is finally revealed.
One of the novel’s major features is that it transports readers back in time to New York of the 1870s, although all characters and most key events have been fictionalized. This is the same formula the author has used in his successful Sam Klein Mystery Series. The author spent several weeks working at the New York Public Library tracking down contemporary press and pamphlet accounts, which have been incorporated into the story. Readers will find here the precise blend of history, mystery and suspense.
Rights available in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.