#The alienist novelist carr series

I have stopped doing that now.Д¬ourse I do know why some books are there вЂ“ these are the Novels I Should Have Read By Now. You would have to waterboard a blurb to get anything like the truth out of it but waterboarding is illegal. You might think the blurbs on these books could give a clue but blurbs lie. Just like you donвЂ™t know why youвЂ™re born. Smonk? What the hell is Smonk? But of course they donвЂ™t know. Why are you taking up this valuable real estate? IвЂ™m talking to you, Continental Drift, Tiger the Lurp Dog, Imaginary Women and Smonk. I feel like a right bastard but I have to be honest вЂ“ why are you there? I ask them. And some turn on the waterworks and cry out beseechingly ohhh please mister, IвЂ™ve been so patient for six years now, I need to be read. I donвЂ™t know about your shelves but my shelves of unread books have become clogged with novels I thought I wanted to read five or six years ago and now I canвЂ™t remember why I thought I wanted to read them and since IвЂ™ve now read all the ones I could remember why I wanted to read them IвЂ™m left with this scurvy crew, and there they are, glaring at me and muttering hey, you, get with the program, read me. It is an age in which questioning societyвЂ™s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.ДЇast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Laszlo Kreizler-a psychologist, or вЂњalienistвЂќ-to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere. Unremarkable as a genre thriller, then, but highly satisfactory as fictionalized social history.When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. Still, it must be said that the motivation of the demented killer is worked out with chilling, pitying conviction. The result is somehow gripping yet lifeless, as evocative period detail jostles with a cast of characters who are, for the most part, as pallid as the murder victims. Morgan, Anthony Comstock, and Franz Boas, and didactic digressions on the rise of Bertillon measurements, fingerprints, the Census Bureau, and gourmet dining (courtesy of Delmonico's) in America. As Moore tours Manhattan's nastiest nightspots and Kreizler's net closes around a suspect, Carr fills out his narrative with obligatory cameos by Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis, J.P. The man they're looking for is over six feet tall about 30 years old an expert mountaineer either a priest or a man from a strongly religious background a veteran of some time among Indians. Despite Moore's skepticism about Roosevelt's plan to put Kreizler on the case (''You'd be better off hiring an African witch doctor,'' he says about his old friend), Kreizler steadily compiles a profile of the killer based on a combination of forensic and psychological evidence. Laszlo Kreizler (called, after the fashion of the time, an ''alienist''), and New York Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt.

#The alienist novelist carr series

A series of gruesome murders and mutilations of heartrendingly young prostitutes - boys dressed as girls - reunites three alumni of William James' pioneering Harvard psychology lectures: Times reporter John Schuyler Moore, eminent psychologist Dr. Novelist/historian Carr (The Devil's Soldier, 1991, etc.) combines his two preferred modes with a meaty, if overslung, serial-killer quest set in 1896 New York.