An alchemist’s immortality elixir becomes entangled with the lives of criminals in 1930s New York. Baccano! follows the people caught in that collision rather than giving a single hero control of the story. Its underworld stakes include an unusual danger: immortals can consume one another.
The elixir’s rules make surviving an attack different from being safe. Its history reaches back to alchemists crossing the Atlantic in 1711, before its recreation in the twentieth century. Those separated periods connect the supernatural premise to the gangland setting without giving the immortals an uncomplicated escape from danger.
Ennis works as assistant to Szilard, the alchemist pursuing the recreated elixir. Her job ties her directly to the invention that other people encounter as a mysterious drink. The streets around her belong to gangs, thieves and would-be profiteers, so the supernatural investigation does not unfold apart from the city’s ordinary criminal business.