The Sturgis Wager: A Detective Story

On a bitter New Year's Eve in 1896, New York City journalist Ralph Sturgis witnesses a cable car collide with a horse-drawn cab on Broadway, exposing a corpse shot dead before the accident. But this is merely the opening move in a far more dangerous game. The mysterious Dr. Murdock, a sardonic figure who believes a 'master criminal' could outwit any detective, challenges Sturgis to solve a baffling case: shots fired at a Wall Street bank after closing hours, with no apparent target, no witness, no evidence. What begins as an intellectual wager escalates into murder, embezzlement, and a secret death chamber lurking beneath the cobblestones of Manhattan. Morette's forgotten 1899 novel anticipates everything the Golden Age would later perfect: the brilliant amateur detective, the Moriarty-like adversary, the interlocking clues that only the cleverest mind can decode. Yet it possesses something many later classics lack: a visceral, Dickensian New York, all gaslit streets and shadowed offices, where finance and crime wear the same tailored coats.