Books: Naughty Old New York

TENDERLOIN (372 pp.)—Samuel Hopkins Adams—Random House ($4.95).

A grafting police chief named "Slogger" Williams christened the area in the 1880s: "I've been living on rump steak long enough. Now I'll have some tenderloin." The Tenderloin contained all that was gaudiest, naughtiest, richest and most crooked in wide-open Gay Nineties New York. Bounded by Manhattan's 14th Street on the south, 42nd Street on the north, Fourth Avenue on the east and North River on the west, it sported theaters, brothels, lordly hotels, the Met, Delmonico's and the Tenderloin Club ("Check your Morals with the Blonde at the Door"). This novel from the...