REVIEW
Caleb Carr - The Alienist
Warner Pbk (ISBN 0 7515 1295 8) £7.99
Packed with period detail, vignettes of true historical characters, and weighing in at nearly 550 pages, Caleb Carr's The Alienist is an ambitious project for a first novel. The book deserved to be nominated for an Anthony Award based on sheer audacity alone and the fact that Carr mostly pulls off this book is remarkable.
Set in late nineteenth century New York The Alienist tells the story of a series of brutal murders by a serial killer preying on teenage male prostitutes. Ordinarily such murders would be ignored, their recognition being an embarrassment to the city's elders, but, through a happy coincidence three college friends are re-united and set out to by-pass the normal channels in an attempt to solve the case. They are: Theodore Roosevelt , Police Commissioner, keen on stamping his authority on a begrudging, corrupt force, John Moore, a local crime reporter, knowledgeable about and acquainted with the city's low-life and, most importantly, Dr Laszlo Kreizler practitioner of the infant, and, misunderstood art of psychoanalysis; the "Alienist" of the title. These three set up a covert operation to capture the killer involving the recruitment of other characteristically marginal characters. And, over the course of the book we are taken to the Old West, to "Sing Sing", and back - in pursuit of the murderer - to the gloomy vice-ridden streets of old New York where newly immigrant families are struggling to make a life against the odds.
The strength of The Alienist is in the atmosphere of the time it evokes. There is no romanticism. We are given a past as corrupt and degraded as our own time and because of this the book rings all the more true. The streets of late nineteenth century New York are dangerous, politicians and police are hypocritical self-servers and the lower orders of society are treated with contempt or indifference. Let loose within this city is a killer, as depraved as any of Thomas Harris' creations, a powerfully evil and disturbed presence. It is in the way that Carr has Kreizler track down this monster that gives the book its individuality. There is hardly any detection by deduction as in the classic nineteenth century mystery. The book has more the feel of a modern day thriller as Kreisler aims to re-create the psychological make-up of the killer and from that predict his future acts. The murderer's childhood becomes as important to Kreizler as the murders themselves. Carr takes the methods of Freud and thrusts them into a fog bound New York and the results are always intriguing and even over 500+ pages eminently readable. Although sometimes there is just too much period detail The Alienist is a must for any fan of the historical detective novel and a safe bet for anybody usually hooked on twentieth century mystery alone. (RL)