If the soot-and-blood mood of Five Points and the child murders Timothy Wilde investigates hooked you, you’ll slide right into The Alienist. Set a few decades later, it follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and reporter John Schuyler Moore as they track a killer preying on boy prostitutes under the wary eye of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. The same grim alleyways, corrupt power brokers, and perilous brothels that Timothy and Valentine navigate are here—only now with early forensics and psychology raising the stakes. You’ll recognize the moral shadows and the relentless, stomach‑tightening pursuit that made The Gods of Gotham so compulsively dark.

If Valentine Wilde’s Tammany strings and the nativist riots pressing on Timothy’s case intrigued you, The Cold Cold Ground brings that pressure cooker to Northern Ireland in 1981. Detective Sean Duffy digs into a killer’s trail while IRA hunger strikes and sectarian flashpoints make every door knock a political act. Like Timothy, Duffy is a good cop in a bad system, where alliances, threats, and back‑room deals can kill an investigation—or the investigator—before the truth surfaces.

If you loved the thickly realized streets—flash cant, tenement reek, saloons, and sanctuaries—that Timothy stalks while chasing the ‘kinchin’ cases, Paradise Alley plunges you back into Five Points during the 1863 Draft Riots. Baker layers Irish and Black communities, dockside grime, and ward politics until the neighborhood feels as alive (and dangerous) as when Timothy traded barroom whispers with Mercy Underhill. It’s less a whodunit than a total immersion in the world that shaped Timothy’s city and its wounds.

If Timothy’s intimate narration—scarred face, guarded heart, and relentless curiosity—pulled you through The Gods of Gotham, you’ll vibe with Easy Rawlins telling his own story in Devil in a Blue Dress. Hired to find a missing woman, Easy’s first-person voice walks you through smoky bars and backroom deals, much like Timothy’s candlelit rounds and confessions with Mercy. The voice is the engine here: personal, perceptive, and willing to scrutinize the cost of every clue.

If the way Timothy and Valentine skirt lines—leaning on informants, using Tammany leverage, making compromises—fascinated you, The Meaning of Night lets you inside the mind of Edward Glyver, a Victorian scholar-sleuth whose pursuit of justice (and revenge) demands moral trespass. Like Timothy’s uneasy bargains in the face of Five Points horrors, Glyver’s choices are riveting precisely because you understand why he makes them—even when they stain his soul.