Gramercy Park by Paula Cohen
(St. Martin’s Press, $24.94, NV) ISBN 0-312-27552-8
****
Move over Iago: there’s a new villain in town! Thaddeus Chadwick is truly odious from his “sausage-like fingers” to his punctuality to his over inflated sense of self-worth. Like Shakespeare’s famous scoundrel he does his evil indirectly by creating situations which allow the most despicable events to occur. Once the inevitable happens he feigns shock and proclaims his innocence. What a blackguard! But that’s not all he’s also a social-climbing lawyer with pretensions to 1894 New York City’s elite under the aegis of Mrs. William Astor.

Shades of melodrama! Enter the handsome, worldly Mario Alfieri, universally acclaimed tenor in search of suitable lodgings while he rehearses for his American debut. Who does he find in a lovely house in Gramercy Park but the frightened and sickly young, Clara Adler, the nineteen year old Jewish ward of the late Mr. Slade. Her guardian, Chadwick’s client, died suddenly and left her totally bereft. She lives in a few rooms tended by the servants with no plans for the future.

An unlikely romance develops between the Italian opera star and the young Clara. As befits a melodrama there is the “good” middle-aged couple who befriend them, the best friend and second to the hero who help thwart the insidious Chadwick and his contemptible plot to seize his former client’s fortune and seduce the young maiden. Chadwick finds an equally horrid ally who really makes one bilious. Please don’t think this is merely a melodrama, although Chadwick does deserve a great deal of boos and hisses.

Paula Cohen recreates New York at the turn of the century with all its Edwardian mores and prejudices but proves that human nature can triumph. Some of the subject matter is vile, the very thought appalling but that is what makes this such a good read - for evil gets its just reward

--Jane Davis

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