31 Bond Street Review

31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan, is a fictionalized version of Dr. Harvey Burdell’s murder in 1857. He was a New York City dentist, and Emma Cunningham, one of his mistresses, was tried for the crime. It was a big scandal and was considered the trial of the century.

Before you run to the Wikipedia article to learn more, I should warn you that Horan’s version of the story differs considerably from what you will read there. While Horan chose to add some characters and leave others out, those that Horan chose to include are vivid and memorable. She has a talent for capturing the essence of a character in a few short paragraphs. There’s a dandy of a district attorney (the future mayor, A. Oakey Hall), the saintly defense attorney, Henry Clinton, and his even saintlier wife, Elisabeth Clinton Clinton–the lady so nice, they named her twice?–and, of course the city of New York. Because no book set in New York and written in the 21st century can neglect to anthropomorphize the city! Except this is a New York City you don’t already know; there are farms, and wetlands, and you could walk to the store AND stable your horse behind your house (I might be the only person who cares about that).

Without extensively researching the Burdell case or New York City life in 1857 myself, it is hard to say how accurate Horan’s research is; however, I’m certainly convinced. I felt myself to be immersed in the time and place of the novel. Chapter seventeen, where defense attorney Henry Clinton and his associate counsel, Thayer, dine at the Astor House, made me wish I could climb through the pages of the book with fork in hand just to sample everything on the menu.

Observe:

Thayer reviewed the menu. It featured over sixty choices of fowls and meats served in pies and puddings, roasted and broiled. There was a choice of beef, chicken, veal, ham, or tongue, calf’s head, sweetbreads, pork steak, pig’s feet, mutton kidney, and cutlets. Separate sauces garnished each dish: walnut catsup, Yankee sauce, horseradish, piccalilli, chowchow sauce, and mushroom catsup. A second course of game offered snipe, plover, pigeon or squab, and a third fish course offered codfish, salmon, black fish, shad, and five different types of turtle caught fresh from Turtle Bay, where snapping turtles grew to forty pounds.

I don’t know how I managed to live twenty six years without knowing about mushroom catsup, but I’m certain I need to investigate this much, much further. And that, I think, is one of Horan’s great achievements; there are all kinds of literature out there, and Horan has written the kind that makes me want to learn more; she showered me with details about the Burdell case and life in New York City, but she also awoke my curiosity, and now I want to know more about the Burdell case, about how New York City got to be New York City, about food 150 years ago, and even about criminal proceedings.

31 Bond Street could be a great cross-over novel for young adults looking to make the transition between books about teenagers and books about adults, provided provided they are mature enough to read about sex and violence. Horan’s style has a certain J.K. Rowling sensibility to it, a way of packing in details about a foreign world and making personalities pop, that I could see an older teen feeling very comfortable with this book.

There’s talk of 31 Bond Street being turned into a movie, and there is a casting game. Since Emma Cunningham’s great crime is initially made out to be her voluptuous figure, I’d cast Catherine Zeta Jones with Dakota Fanning and Scarlett Johansson as her daughters, Jude Law as A. Oakey Hall, and Eric Bana as Henry Clinton. How about you?

Cast the Movie!