THE BISHOP AND THE BUTTERFLY
Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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“The 1931 murder of ‘Broadway Butterfly’ Vivian Gordon exposed an explosive story of graft, corruption and entrapment that went all the way to the top of the state. Wolraich brings a journalist’s eye and a novelist’s elegance to this story of Jazz Age New York.”
— New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“Propulsive. . .Wolraich manages to handle even the seediest of underworlds with reportorial spareness and elegance, treating his material more as a nonfiction political thriller than a true-crime whodunit...The book also provides a fascinating portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt…The Gordon murder and Seabury hearings might have long since faded from public memory, but their prism into corruption and ruthless opportunism remains ever relevant.”
“[Michael Wolraich] weaves together characters as effectively as E.L. Doctorow did in novels such as ‘Ragtime’ and ‘Billy Bathgate.’ But the real star remains the city of New York in all its contradictions — ever elegant and seedy, uplifting and soul-crushing, progressive and reactionary.”
— Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
“This engrossing true crime tale...examines mobsters and misconduct in 1930s Manhattan through the case of murdered actor Vivian Gordon…Wolraich does a sterling job spinning the investigation into a portrait of wider New York society, all while keeping the pages turning as quickly as in any top-shelf mystery novel. Fans of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City will be enthralled.”
“An engrossing, sometimes heart-breaking, and invariably jaw-dropping read. Mr. Wolraich has a journalist’s eye for the telling detail and a novelist’s knack for the salacious, the colorful, and the too good to be true…‘The Bishop and the Butterfly’ is eminently readable and outrageously colorful, a true-life thriller in which no stone, however seamy or compromised, is left unturned.”
The Butterfly: Vivian Gordon
Read all about Vivian Gordon’s murder in The New York Post
(click for the digital version)
The Bishop: Samuel Seabury
“The Bishop and the Butterfly reads like a cross between a whodunnit and a political expose. Both stories provide plenty of suspects, false leads, and rabbit trails, but unraveling one holds the key to unraveling the other. And Vivian Gordon’s tragic story is at the heart of it all.”
“An absorbing history of the downfall of New York City’s Tammany Hall political machine...There’s a sense throughout the book that the world doesn’t work so differently today and that we could be just one splashy murder away from a similar comeuppance.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune Book Review
“A roadside discovery of the body of a beautiful, would-be starlet; an investigation into a city’s underbelly to find her killer; a cat-and-mouse game between detectives and criminals reminiscent of an early 20th-century detective noir...In this meticulously drawn account of the crusade against unscrupulous characters deeply embedded in the halls of power, The Bishop and the Butterfly shares a glimpse into a fight for decency and fairness that continues to this day.”
An engrossing work of narrative non-fiction, eloquently told and deeply researched. Wolraich’s love of New York City comes through especially in his lyrical and vivid depictions of the places in which the story takes place.”
“A massively researched chronicle of fraud and vice that is as relevant today as it was a century ago.”
Chicago Review of Books: Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“The Bishop and The Butterfly is a first-class murder mystery, unfolding addictively through its twists and crooked turns. But it’s also a remarkable portrait of New York during the Prohibition era, alive with speakeasies and forbidden cocktails, crime and corruption, the perfect setting for evil to thrive and heroes to emerge undaunted.”
“The Bishop and the Butterfly tells the true-crime tale of a woman obsessed with revenge against the crooked cop who put her behind bars, whose unsolved murder brought down New York City’s mayor and propelled Franklin D. Roosevelt into the White House. With impeccable research, evocative details, and an extraordinary cast of characters, Michael Wolraich exposes the ugly underbelly of the Jazz Age.”
“A real-life murder mystery that proves that fact is stranger than fiction. The Bishop and the Butterfly starts with a tip-of-the-iceberg murder and ends with the sinking of an era. Michael Wolraich is a remarkably good writer who delivers history, alive and well to the modern reader.”
New York City Mayor James J. Walker / New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt
CrimeReads: The Best Reviewed Books of the Month
Crime scene, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx
“In The Bishop and the Butterfly, Michael Wolraich hasn’t merely written a lurid urban tale of jazz molls, dirty cops and crooked politicians. His story — which contains all that — matters more. It depicts that unrepeatable moment when New York’s underworld reached up from the shadows and changed the course of the city’s history.”
— Alan Feuer, journalist and author of El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzman
“Rare is the book that is both a rip-roaring yarn and also deeply researched social history…This is a book that can be read in a great big gulp, the story of New York in the Jazz Age and how the murder of a lady of the New York night helped bring down the most powerful political machine America has ever known and elect Franklin Roosevelt in the process. Surely one of the great New York City books in many years.”
In meticulous, delicious detail Wolraich paints a rich portrait of a teetering city, and the invisible — until now— woman who pushed it over the brink. Wolraich has a gift for language, a talent for reporting, and a detective’s eye for mystery. Vivian Gordon and the jazz age live again in his prose.”
— Sarah Maslin Nir, journalist and author of Horse Crazy, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist
The Bishop and the Butterfly is both a true crime tale and a political thriller, but in its sum it’s a grander and more ambitious thing than either of those constituent parts – a parable about the treacly appeal of wealth and influence and power, and the ever-present need to remain vigilant against our leaders’ worst instincts.”
— Colin Asher, award-winning author of Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren
About the book
Her body lay in the undergrowth beside a road that snaked through Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park. It might have gone unnoticed but for a white kid glove snagged on a bush that caught the morning light, drawing the attention of a pedestrian. Her hair was auburn and fashionably short. She wore a black velvet dress and a single suede shoe. A dirty noose squeezed her throat so tightly that it broke the skin. The murder was sensational, even by the jaded standards of the bloody Prohibition Era. Journalists rushed to the scene and breathlessly expounded on the victim’s beauty and glamorous clothing.
But the biggest bombshell landed after the body was identified as Benita Bischoff, alias Vivian Gordon. The lead detective described her as a “a woman of many acquaintances,” while the Bronx DA called her “a shakedown artist.” When detectives searched her posh Midtown apartment, they found scandalous black books and an explosive clue—a letter from an anti-corruption investigation that had exposed a heinous police conspiracy. These shocking discoveries riveted the public and set in motion events that ultimately brought down the corrupt political machine that had ruled New York for generations.
“Sharp, streamlined . . . Wolraich is at his lucid best.” — Washington Post, 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction
“A mighty and relevant insight into the cyclical nature of history.” — Publisher’s Weekly
“Exceptionally modern . . . lively, passionate, and cinematic. . . . The book almost reads like a political thriller.” — LSE Review of Books
“An historical goldmine.” — Thomas Edsall, New York Times columnist, professor at Columbia Journalism School
“A must read.” — Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo
