Duel with the devil The true story of how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr teamed up to take on America's first sensational murder mystery

Set in New York City in 1800, the murder case that Collins re-creates began with the discovery of a young woman's body in a well. It was a politically connected well, owned by a company controlled by Aaron Burr. The accused in the killing had his own influential connection--to Alexander Hamilton--through a brother who built houses for the city's elite. So, strangely, those Revolutionary War heroes, intense political rivals, and future duelists became the defense lawyers for Levi Weeks. Resident of a boardinghouse in which victim Elma Sands also lived, Weeks at trial faced a circumstantial case. With no eyewitnesses to the murder to confront, Burr and Hamilton pounced on weaknesses in the prosecution's case, and the jury returned an acquittal. Derived from what Collins reports is one of the first trial transcripts in American legal history, this tautly constructed narrative, infused with period atmosphere, holds the reader's attention on the fate of the participants, including the well, which still exists. Collins (The Murder of the Century, 2011) delivers fine true-crime verisimilitude.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

NPR's "literary detective" once again applies his skills as a historian to a now-obscure crime that was a cause celebre in its day. With a novelist's touch, Collins (The Murder of the Century) opens with the January 1800 discovery of a woman's body in a Manhattan well, before flashing back six months to provide the back-story to that grim find. The victim proves to be Elma Sands, a Quaker woman who had disappeared from her lodging house under circumstances that led authorities to suspect carpenter and fellow boarder Levi Weeks. Fortunately for Weeks, his defense fell to two of the most prominent and skilled lawyers of the day-bitter political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, whose later fatal duel casts a somber pall over the suspenseful account of the crime, the trial, and its aftermath. Using the court transcript as a primary source, Collins makes the most of the inherent drama of the case, and goes one step further to unearth convincing proof of the identity of the real killer. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In this latest in a series of curious works from the wide-ranging Collins (The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars), NPR's "literary detective," may have created a new subgenre of early republic true crime. He delves into the true story of Elma Sands's murder in 1799 New York City. When the beautiful Quaker woman's mutilated body was discovered in famed lawyer Aaron Burr's Manhattan well, public outcry rose against the prime murder suspect, her suitor Levi Weeks. Burr joined with his rival Alexander Hamilton to defend Weeks both in the courtroom and to the clamoring public. Not only does Collins provide an absorbing mystery, he also offers an entrancing account of the era's yellow journalism (think Pulitzer and Hearst) while illuminating the legal acumen of two of our country's greatest trial lawyers-and he solves the cold case of Elma Sands's murder to boot. VERDICT With an historian's dedication to detail, Collins brings to life the dusty story discovered in voluminous trial transcripts and newspaper clippings. An entertaining read is in store for those lucky enough to find this book.-Reba Kennedy, San Antonio, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Ostensibly the tale of a dramatic murder trial with three famous defense attorneys, "the first fully recorded murder trial in U.S. history," but actually more of an intriguing exploration of Manhattan in 1799. Collins (The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars, 2012, etc.) ably brings New York to life; this would be a great reference book for authors looking for site descriptions. The author's New York is a fascinating place, one that only covered the southern tip of Manhattan and still had no potable water. The Manhattan Company was commissioned to build a pipeline, and those involved in it were major players on both sides of the crime: the murder of a Quaker woman, Elma Sands. There are many characters in the book, and it takes some time before we can identify the victim and suspect. The defense attorneys, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Henry Brockholst Livingston, don't appear until halfway through the book. The question of how the plaintiff, a mere carpenter, could afford such a dream team may have something to do with the suspect's builder brother, who happened to hold past-due notes from Burr and Hamilton. Once the trial begins, the narrative truly takes off, as Collins reveals the immense talents of the three attorneys. The story is an interesting view of the new nation struggling to establish its own judicial system, but there's too much extraneous information, such as the life stories of peripheral characters and criminal backgrounds of those who shared the jail with the accused. A rousing tale of the longest murder trial to that date in Manhattan, and the author's conjecture as to the true villain is spot-on--but he should have focused more on the trial.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.