If Fingy Conners had sprung from some writer's fanciful imaginings, such a character would be dismissed as outlandish and improbable, so thoroughly and so swiftly did this actual historic figure accrue wealth, political power and cruel domination over so many. The author, having been previously criticized by some as having drawn Fingy Conners "too cartoon-like" finds his historically accurate portrayal redeemed now that we have so many strikingly equivalent present day examples in the news.
Volume 4 in Richard Sullivan's The First Ward novel series begins at the turn of the 20th Century with serial killer J. Frank Hickey fleeing NYC for the anonymity of Buffalo after murdering a little newsboy in Central Park. Little Michael Kruck is not Hickey's first victim. While in Buffalo, the short, bookish, bespectacled alcoholic Hickey becomes involved in a saloon brawl and is arrested by Detective Jim Sullivan. While in his jail cell dead drunk, he loudly brags about killing the newsboy, but recants the following morning upon sobering up. He is ultimately released. For the next nine years by Hickey's admitted count there are no less than 11 more male child/teen victims, the most recent being a seven year old missing Lackawanna child of Syrian immigrants whose body goes undiscovered despite the killer's multiple written confessions. Hickey sends a series of postcards to the town's Police Chief telling him precisely where to find the boy's body, but the incompetent Chief inexplicably dismisses these as a hoax, resulting in needless year of prolonged grief, widespread fear, and public ridicule.
Based on the actual historical figures, "The First Ward: His Lips Forgot The Taste Of Truth" is Volume 4 of a 5-Volume series of related, yet stand-alone books. The main characters are friends since childhood from Buffalo's waterfront Irish First Ward - cops, politicians and thugs - men whose lifelong relationships allow for even the most egregious crimes to go "unsolved" and unpunished.
Millionaire Fingy Conners leaves a wake of countless dead and maimed in a 50-year authoritarian reign that finds him ultimately becoming the Chairman of the Democratic Party of New York State. Conners wielded absolute power in Buffalo for half a century, owning the police, the politicians, the judges, the clergy, and even powerful publisher William Randolph Hearst, who all cast a blind eye and lent a helping hand in the commission and cover up of his brazen crimes and wrongdoings.
Brothers Alderman John P. Sullivan and Detective Sergeant Jim Sullivan continue to grapple with life's tragedies while aiding and abetting their criminal associates and initiating strife in their own families. The women of The First Ward, acting as moral center, try and make sense of this pre-suffrage world in which they have little choice or voice-even as they prove themselves over and again to be the stronger gender, despite society's being dominated and controlled by men.