Overview:
The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. 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. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.
My Review:
I know this book has been out for just shy of 25 years and though I have had it on my shelf for what seems like nearly half that time, I am just now getting around to reading it. I guess the TNT series based on this book is what finally reminded me that I had the book and incentivized me to actually read it. Now I am kicking myself for waiting so long.
In this book, we meet John Moore - a reporter for a New York City newspaper - and his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. Dr. Kreizler is what was then known as an alienist but today we would call a psychiatrist/psychologist. After a gruesome murder of an adolescent boy "whore", Dr. Kreizler and John put together a team to to come up with a criminal profile of the murderer. As they delve deeper into his psyche, they realize they can attribute other child murders to him, even as he continues to kill.
The book is part psychological thriller and part murder mystery, and I found it to be riveting. I loved the mixing of the two and the added historical details, such as Teddy Roosevelt (who was the Police Commissioner at the time). The characters are a little complicated in that we don't really learn much about them (Sara still remains a mystery) and yet they still seem well developed and believable. I have to confess, though, that I did not care for John that much. He was too arrogant and yet cowardly at the same time and I just couldn't get on board with him which could have been problematic considering he was the one telling the story.
One thing I really disliked was the amount of unnecessary detail of some things, like the seemingly endless description of the opera house or the restaurant they frequented. Throughout the book, Carr spends way too much time "telling" and not "showing". It really took me out of the story because I want to see the world through the action of the story, not the author just describing it to me. Does that make sense? It felt like I was reading a brochure on the opulence of the buildings instead of seeing it through the eyes of the characters as it related to the story.
That being said, I really enjoyed the story. I have not seen the TNT show yet as I was waiting to finish the book and now that I have, I am curious to see how it was adapted for television. I also need to pick up the sequel, The Angel of Darkness. I also read on the Entertainment Weekly website that there are possibly two more books in the series being written but I haven't seen confirmation of that by Carr so take it with a grain of salt.
Have you read this series and/or watched the television show? If so, what did you think?
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