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The pseudonymous Flint, the pen name of Gerard Helferich (An Unlikely Trust: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Improbable Partnership That Remade American Business), makes good use of his historical knowledge in his superior fiction debut, set in 1896 New York City. Crusading police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who has launched a series of reforms in the NYPD aimed at both rooting out corruption and raising the standards for members of the force, is summoned by J.P. Morgan, who demands assistance in dealing with William Mann, the publisher of the society magazine Town Topics. Mann has used his publication as the front for a lucrative blackmail scheme, gaining sensitive information on the Four Hundred, the city’s wealthiest and most influential people, by bribing their servants. Roosevelt meets Mann, who threatens to expose Morgan and other prominent men unless he’s paid off. The vagueness of what Mann is threatening makes charging him with extortion challenging, but that question is mooted by his murder. Roosevelt, aided by his special assistant Otto Raphael, investigates the killing. Flint’s vivid depictions of life in New York City’s poorer neighborhoods enhance the twisty plot. Fans of Lyndsay Faye’s Timothy Wilde books will be enthralled. Agent: Deirdre Mullane, Mullane Literary. (Apr.)