THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA, a novel by Jack Casey, tells of the struggles of the Irish in gritty, industrial Troy, N.Y. (130,000 words, 55 illustrations). The year is 1894. Boss Edward Murphy, United States Senator and New York State Democratic Chairman, runs this upstate mill city from a brewery. Thugs and repeat voters emerge from ward saloons each election day to stuff ballot boxes and keep Murphy s Irish Catholic Democrats in office. When a posse of Protestant vigilantes turns out to stop the voting fraud, a young industrialist is gunned down. The murder of Robert Ross sparks an explosive backlash. Pious congregations cry for vengeance from the Protestant pulpits. Suffragettes demand the woman s vote to reform and civilize elections. A secret fraternity dresses in black robes and hoods and fastens on to the murder to topple Murphy and seize power. Stepping from the shadows, shrewd Yankee lawyer Frank Black accuses Bartholomew Shea of the crime, and then guides community outrage into the channels of criminal law. But did Shea pull the fatal trigger? From elegant mansions to immigrant slums, this drama of ambition and betrayal, of bigotry and oppression plays against the backdrop of industrial America while the Victorian age darkens. THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA recounts how a saloon thug steals an election, and how a political opportunist then leads a flag-waving mob and twists the law to extract the last full measure of revenge, a life for a life, in the name of truth and justice.

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