The Bishop and the Butterfly

Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

By: Michael Wolraich

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty clothesline wrapped around her neck. At her stylish Manhattan apartment, detectives discovered notebooks full of names—businessmen, socialites, gangsters. And something else—a letter from an anti-corruption commission established by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Led by the imperious Judge Samuel Seabury, the commission had uncovered a police conspiracy to frame women as prostitutes. Had Vivian Gordon been executed to bury her secrets? As FDR pressed the police to solve her murder, Judge Seabury pursued the trail of corruption to the top of Gotham’s powerful political machine—the infamous Tammany Hall.

©2024 Michael Wolraich (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

The narration was soooo boring

Sounds like she’s reading out of a history book. I love reading about this Era, but I found the narration tedious.

Annoying narration of a good story

Unfortunately, the female narrator spent a lot of time shouting and overdramatizing lines spoken by male characters, which predominate the book. That seemed to be her way of trying to convey their heavy handedness or power and control over the lives and misfortunes of the female characters. Instead it was simply grating and distracting. I would have enjoyed the book far more without the cheesy narration.

Monotonous naration. Just read text.

History of corruption in NYC interesting. Packed with facts, name dropping and basically TMI. Not fiction, but interesting to see how corrupt the country was in the making. Greed. Disgusting New York politics. Boring and tedious naration. Audible has become so cheap! Previews too short. Catalog has very little. I can barely find a book that I enjoy. Narrators annoying

History of NYC corruption in the 1920s and 1930s

The history was illuminating but the link to the murder of Vivian Gordon was attenuated. The image of Samuel S Leibowitz in this book is an interesting contrast to his image provided by Quentin Reynolds in Courtroom.

Excellent read!

I really enjoyed hearing about New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Michael Wolraich brings that period to life as he interweaves the murder of Vivian Gordon and the corruption of Tammany Hall. I was shocked, surprised, and thoroughly entertained by this book. Definitely worth the listen!