The Midnight Band of Mercy

Max Greengrass is a "space-rater" at the "New York Herald," paid by the column inch. A pugilist turned reporter, he hustles to get by, and good stories are hard to come by. Then he trips over one: a dead cat, laid out on the sidewalk alongside others arranged in some pattern. Investigating further, he discovers an organization of respectable ladies committed to ridding the city of its mongrel hordes of cats. Catricide! It's bizarre and makes for a story, but it also leads him toward something far more sinister, the Eugenics Movement--improving the race through culling poor genetic stock, a high-minded concept advocated by many American leaders, later adopted by fascist movements in Europe. The dead cats are connected to it in a way both unthinkable and horrifying.

At the heart of "The Midnight Band of Mercy" is a story of the slaughter of innocents too strange to be true, except most of it is.