The riveting story of how the murder of femme fatale Vivian Gordon in 1931 brought about the downfall of the mayor of New York City and led to the end of Tammany Hall's dominance.
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.

Michael Wolraich is the author of the critically acclaimed Unreasonable Men and Blowing Smoke. His writing has appeared in RollingStone, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, New York Magazine, CNN.com, Reuters, and Talking Points Memo.

Moderator Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist and the author of six books, including The Poisoner's Handbook, a New York Times best-seller, and The Poison Squad, a New York Times notable book. She is currently working on a book about female poisoners and serial killers.