Everybody Dies In The End

Volume 5 of Richard Sullivan's The First Ward historical novel series, "Everybody Dies In The End," based on actual people and their activities legal and otherwise in Buffalo's wild and wooly waterfront First Ward, sees five of the real life principal characters die-four of them within four months of each other. Preceding their demise, each is involved in a series of life-changing ventures. We meet William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, known as the "Father of the CIA" who was born and raised in the First Ward. Donovan lets others' high opinions of him go to his head as he overreaches his authority to betray and alienate his family, friends, clients and even his own law partner. Future King of England, Edward Prince of Wales, visits Buffalo with his flirtatious gay brother to dedicate the opening of the Peace Bridge linking Canada and the US. Fingy Conners, "The Boss" of the First Ward, takes control of the Great Lakes shipping trade, putting him in the ideal position to make millions rum-running during Prohibition. During Prohibition the US Coast Guard runs wild murdering innocent citizens merely on suspicion of their possessing alcohol. Lydia Harper, a beautiful negro prostitute, becomes a heroine in the deadly cholera epidemic, only to be shunned afterward by the very same people whose lives she saved. In his final year on earth, Detective Sergeant Jim Sullivan resurrects the Mutual Rowing Club after World War I, coupled with the Spanish Flu epidemic, nearly cause its closure. The widow of a murdered sailor enlists Alderman John P. Sullivan in her quarter century battle to clear her husband's name and win her rightful widow's pension from the US Navy. During a labor strike against him, Fingy Conners imports 12,000 desperate men into the city as strike-breakers, who then go on to wreak havoc at great cost to city taxpayers. Members of the Mutual Rowing Club sabotage their own National Champion's chances to compete in the 1924 Paris Olympics. A Buffalo pharmacist, Boris Reinstein, joins the Russian Revolution and rises to become a principal Minister in Vladimir Lenin's Soviet cabinet. Publisher William Randolph Hearst once again decides to run for Governor of New York and enlists Fingy Conners as his campaign manager. Movie star Marion Davies, Hearst's out-of-control mistress, poses the ultimate threat, as the Catholic Bishop of Buffalo William Turner just happens to occupy the ship's cabin next door to Hearst and Davies' during their clandestine (and very noisy) trans-Atlantic crossing. And through it all, the conscience of The First Ward series, Hannah Sullivan, endures and ultimately triumphs in her own modest manner.