Carol's Notebook

Westside is the first in a series starring Gilda Carr, a young woman who looks into what she calls “tiny mysteries.” She's not interested in solving murders - big mysteries mean big problems and Gilda doesn't need that. Her mom died when she was a kid, and her father, Virgil Carr aka “Clubber,” was not only the founder of a notorious Westside gang, he later became a notorious cop, vanishing in a notorious disappearance some years back. Our setting is Manhattan of 1921, but it's a stranger, darker, wilder place. Odd objects, coffee pots, stairway railings, entire buildings just disappear. Things rot and rust quicker. Machines stop working. Guns fail. The trees do well, though, growing fast and unnaturally tall. Streets become streams instead of the other way around. Occasional waterfalls form and descend from rooftops. It is where Gilda lives. And people disappear. In 1914 when over three thousand people vanished on the Westside, thirteen miles of fence was erected...