I tried to remember when I saw the title of this book: weren't Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr the guys who dueled each other? Yes, yes, they were. But that was after they teamed up to defend Levi Weeks against charges of murdering a fellow boarding house lodger. (Which was after decades of antagonizing one another, which is why even at the time, Weeks's legal team raised eyebrows. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Twenty-year-old Elma Sands walked out the front door of her Manhattan boarding house the Sunday before Christmas, 1799, and disappeared. Nearly two weeks later, her body was dragged from the depths of one of the city's wells and the murder pinned squarely on carpenter Levi Weeks.
Weeks's older brother, Ezra, is one of the most prominent builders in Manhattan - and Hamilton and Burr both happen to be in his debt, literally, for variously commissioned projects. The elder Weeks wastes no time ensuring that his brother's counsel is the finest ever assembled in the city - and the fine counsel, in turn, wastes no time conducting their own investigation of the gripping case.
Duel with the Devil is non-fiction storytelling at its finest, on par which such works as Flyboys and In the Garden of Beasts.
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