Hart of Madness

Mystery People of the UK
The use of modern forensic methods on this long-forgotten case is fascinating as is the incorporation of real figures from 1902 New York.

5-Stars on Goodreads
In 1902, nineteen-year-old Ruby was charged with murdering her family and sent away to a women’s asylum. Fast forward to 2016 to another family murder. Are they connected? This book was wonderfully written, and I love the history of old mental institutions and a murder mystery on top. . . what an excellent read!

Hart Island is a small island located in the Long Island Sound, off the coast of the Bronx, in New York City. It has been a public mass burial ground, a colossal “potter’s field” for a million souls since 1869.

The crumbling remains of its buildings once served as:
a Union Civil War prison camp,
a tuberculosis sanatorium,
a boys’ reformatory and . . .
a woman’s lunatic asylum.

New York City, 1902
Born into society, nineteen-year-old Ruby Hunt is accused of brutally killing her mother, father, and brother in their Central Park apartment. She is committed to a lunatic asylum at Hart Island for the rest of her life.

Over a century later, a descendant of the Hunt family is murdered, and NYPD homicide detective Frank Mead is convinced there is a connection between the current death and that of her great aunt, Ruby.

Thanks to the contents of a battered suitcase passed down from Ruby’s caretaker, old photographs, letters, and a diary lead Mead on a convoluted trail of greed, deception, and murder spanning two centuries.

Juxtaposed on the modern story is an historical story of a rookie New York detective, Liam McCarty, seeking justice and freedom for Ruby.