The Great Mistake

A Novel

By: Jonathan Lee

Narrated by: Graham Halstead

An exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, about one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder—“engrossing” (Wall Street Journal), “immersive” (The New Yorker), and “seriously entertaining” (The Sunday Times, London).

Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing - on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the 13th - shook the city.

Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.

A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him - yet enlarged it.

©2021 Jonathan Lee (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Guardian, LitHub

One of CrimeReads' Best Historical Novels of the Year

A Best Book of Summer: Entertainment Weekly, Oprah Quarterly, Vulture, Town & Country, Refinery29

“Engrossing.... Genuinely impressive...Lee is an excellent sketcher of character, setter of scene, and weaver of research.... None of Lee’s sentences is soulless. They brim with life and music and filigree-fine craft.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“Unforgettable.... It would be easy to recommend The Great Mistake for its confident, well-researched, and impeccably crafted take on a singular individual who had so much to do with the creation of New York City as we know it. But you should really read this book for Lee’s exquisite prose, his poetic shadings of a life and a time in which so much was possible.” (Chicago Review of Books)

“Finely drawn...Jonathan Lee’s intriguing novel has all the ingredients of a whodunit, but he’s more interested in the personal mysteries of the man who opened up the city ‘while keeping himself closed’.” (Alida Becker, New York Times Book Review)

A Well-Lived Life?

“The Great Mistake” is a clever novelization of the life of Andrew Haswell Green, the 19th Century municipal leader who was responsible for creating Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other New York cultural touchstones. Green is shown as a sensitive figure, ambitious but prudent. His closest relationship is with his friend Samuel Tilden, the New York governor and presidential candidate, another confirmed bachelor. There are some surprising, well-drawn characters in the novel. These include a maverick cop investigating Green’s 1903 murder and a ribald brothel owner who may have ties to Green’s killer. Some scenes were surprising as well, like a startling meeting among civic leaders debating the merits of a “central park” in Manhattan—why spend money on another park, when there were more important needs like roads and schools?

The narration was excellent. I enjoyed the book and also learned something about New York life in the nineteenth century.

intimate

This book was slow and thoughtful and satisfying at a personal and historical level.

A Perfect Book

This was a highly interesting, enjoyable and well-written book. I knew nothing about Andrew Haswell Green, even though I have walked through Central Park many times and even played with a toy boat in one of the park’s ponds as a child. I also read books about NY history. I love the NY institutions, the lions in front of the library, the Met. I am so grateful to learn more about how all of these wonderful places came to be. I appreciate how well Johnathon Lee writes. So many newer published books sacrifice good writing.

Not much happens.

Very well written and structured. Good narration. Not much happens to the main character. There is a resolution of a so/so mystery.

Complete misfire of a biography.

WAY too much emphasis on the fact that Greene was gay, WAY too little focus on what he accomplished and how he accomplished it.