Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure

On a frozen night in old New York, Officer 4434, Bobbie Burke, watches a man throw a woman down tenement stairs. He intervenes. She bites him. The man runs. This is how the city's oldest war begins: not with gunfire, but with bodies bought and sold in backrooms above saloons. Ball's 1913 novel tears open the Progressive Era's darkest secret, following Burke as he confronts the "white slave trade" consuming young women by the thousands. The cop sees what the courts refuse to prosecute: organized networks, bribed officials, and a legal system that fails the vulnerable while reformers argue in newspapers. Part gritty procedural, part moral crusade, Traffic in Souls pulses with righteous anger at a society that monetizes innocence. It's a period artifact, yes, but its portrait of predatory men and compromised justice reads like it was written last week.