Into the Suffering City

<p>New historical crime thriller explores Baltimore through the eyes of a young female doctor on the autism spectrum.</p><p><em>Into the Suffering City</em> by Bill LeFurgy centers on a murder investigation set against the backdrop of a historically accurate depiction of city life a century ago.</p><p>It’s 1909 and Baltimore is jumping with danger and excitement. Cars cocaine ragtime music and moving pictures are new. But some things are as old as the city itself: murder corruption and the painful divisions of race class and gender. </p><p>Dr. Sarah Kennecott is brilliant and on the autism spectrum—a trait that is unidentified and unappreciated at the time. And after getting fired for probing the death of a showgirl she refuses to back down. Although dealing with people is  hard she works to get information from arrogant and abusive men while defying an effort to banish her to a horrifying insane asylum. </p><p>Sarah forms an unlikely bond with Jack Harden a down-on-his-luck private detective struggling with a condition similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from witnessing a wartime massacre overseas. Jack pushes the case into Baltimore’s seedy underworld a vitally corrupt realm of saloons brothels and burlesque theaters. Along the way he’s got to deal with a murderous police detective and a moving pictures actress who is as deadly as she is beautiful. </p><p><em>Into the Suffering City</em> uses the actual historical circumstances of 1909 Baltimore including virulent racism (including a law that prevents a people of mixed race from marrying a white person) rampant use of cocaine and other narcotics and widespread out in the open prostitution. </p><p><em>Into the Suffering City </em>gives insight into the struggles a century ago of women people of color those with mental illness those on the autism spectrum and the great mass of people considered “lower class.”</p><p>The book also explores the newly emergent field of criminal forensics at a time when fingerprints and rigorous crime scene analysis were not routine police procedure.</p>