Caleb Carr (1955–2024)

"'They'll want him to be mad, of course,' Lazlo mused, not hearing me. 'The doctors here, the newspapers, the judges; they'd like to think that only a madman would shoot a five-year-old girl in the head. It creates certain . . . difficulties, if we are forced to accept that our society can produce sane men who commit such acts.'" (from The Alienist, page 33)

This passage resonates with me and seems relevant, not only for the book's major themes, but for our time, as well. How many times is a show more terrible crime committed and the immediate response is: oh, that person must be crazy, insane, mentally ill! No one likes to think that someone who is sane could do something that heinous, because that implies that the criminal is one of us, like us, and that creates the possibility that we could become like him, capable of doing the heinous act we've just condemned. That means we're capable of doing anything. Disturbing, indeed.

Lazlo is the alienist of the title, a psychiatrist in a time when psychiatry was viewed with suspicion, a non-scientific, disreputable profession. He is called in to investigate a horrific murder of a young male prostitute. Along with a ragtag assortment of other people, he works to create a profile of the murderer from the details of the murder victim's body and circumstances.

Back when I was starting to write fiction (in high school), I heard about this novel. It was praised and I was mildly interested, but I never got around to it until now.

I'm torn on how to rate this book.

On the one hand, it held my attention for the two days I spent reading it. I enjoyed the historical details, as well as the exploration of contemporary ideas about criminal behavior, mental illness, and the intersection of the two. The young victims are male child prostitutes, and I found the contemporary attitudes toward sex trafficking interesting to read about. It's tragic that the United States preferred to ignore both child prostitution and the poverty that drove many kids to sell themselves. What was once some flat, impersonal facts in a history book came alive for me in Carr's novel.

On the other, I disliked the detailed description of the murder victims' bodies. It was disturbing, as it was obviously intended and needed to be. It was also necessary, given that the entire premise revolved around Lazlo & company's attempt to profile the murderer based on the details of the murders (including the mutilated bodies).

But here's my question regarding this book and other murder mysteries: Does using something as horrible as a murder for entertainment a good thing? (I could apply the question to any terrible thing, such as rape, suicide, war, etc.) Does it desensitize the reader to the horrible nature of ending another person's life, leading to a callous attitude when confronted with this in real life? Or is there a benefit to fictionalizing crimes? Does it depend upon the author's attitude or motivation? I'm not sure. It's a question I've been bothered by since junior high school, and for many years I stopped reading mysteries because of it.

Add to that the very detailed nature of the victims' bodies in this book, and I'm disturbed even more. Many of the victims are first seen after their death. They exist only as victims, not as full-fledged characters (fictionalized humans). It's standard practice in this genre, but it has the effect of dehumanizing the victims and making me almost indifferent to their (fictional) deaths. Is this good? What benefit can there be in this? I really don't know.

Because of my conflicted response, I can't give it 5 or 4 stars, but the quality of the writing is terrific. 3 stars. show less

This is not just about death, loss, and grief, although you know there'sgoing to be that, and it is heartbreaking. There is also violence, suffering, pain, because the cat who found Carr had also endured a horrible beginning. But there is unconditional love, and companionship, and someone who understands, which is to say: grace.

Carr's memoir is remarkable because he paid such close attention from the beginning to Masha. His thoughts, like his feelings, had time to develop an exquisite show more complexity and richness. He wrote as if he had all the time in the world. He didn't, of course, none of us do, but he did have just enough. A beautiful memorial to a remarkable cat, who brought out all his finer qualities in a way people mostly didn't. I cannot believe in an afterlife that doesn't reunite them.

Library copy show less

Summary: In the New York City of 1896, corruption was rampant, particularly in the city's police department. New Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt was attempting reform, but a number of cases still fell through the cracks. An apparent pattern in several of these cases is brought to the attention of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist (or "alienist") who is obsessed with the ways in which childhood experience can shape later life. The cases all involve the violent and disturbing murders of show more immigrant children - specifically those who had been making their living at one of the city's numerous brothels. Kreizler, along with reporter John Moore, two of the top (and first) forensic scientists of the time, and a young woman determined to become the city's first female police officer, must push police work beyond where it has gone before, creating a profile of this shadowy serial killer... and finding him before he can strike again.

Review: While I didn't always love the packaging, the story at the core of The Alienist was an excellent detective mystery. The pacing is excellent, the historical detail is fascinating, and the action/thriller parts were properly exciting. It's not a mystery in a whodunit sense, where the clues are all given to the reader, and that reader can piece together the solution on their own; because the detectives are working on profiling the killer, who could be anyone in the city, there's not really that element of solving the mystery for yourself. Nevertheless, I was kept thoroughly engaged by Kreizler's team's efforts, even when I couldn't see (or even guess) where they were going.

But really, the best part about this book for me was the historical atmosphere. While I like the idea of Gilded Age NYC in theory, several of my past encounters with it in fiction have been rather disappointing (a problem of the prose, not the setting, but a strong enough association to make me wary.) Carr, however, brings the era wonderfully to life, taking readers from the glitzy world of Delmonico's Restaurant to the dankest and darkest slums and brothels. He also manages to smoothly incorporate not just the feeling of the city itself, but also some aspects of the wider political and social climate of the time, which doesn't always happen in historical fiction. And most of all, I found the glimpse into the history of mental illness and the early days of forensics completely fascinating; it was a time in which the idea that fingerprints were unique and invariant was still considered quackery, but it was widely believed that the retina retained an image of the last thing a person saw before death.

This book is written as a memoir from Moore's point of view. While this did lend some reflective, larger-picture aspects to the story than it would have had if it hadn't been told in the first person, I think the lack of immediacy hurt the story more than it helped. For starters, it's clear that if Moore is telling the story, he must have survived its events, which diffuses some of the suspense of what would otherwise have been very tense scenes. But what mostly annoyed me was that the memoir framework was used to put these really broad, portentous "teaser" hints throughout the book: a lot of "we didn't know it at the time, but..."-type statements that would take chapters to be revealed and resolved. But in the grand scheme of things, that's relatively minor; most of what this book does, it does very well indeed. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: The comparison that kept coming to mind while I read was to Devil in the White City; despite the fiction/non-fiction divide, they're actually very similar not only in subject matter but also in tone. But more broadly, I think this one should definitely be on the radar for any fan of historical mysteries, or fans of modern mysteries who are interested in the early days of serial killers and forensic detective work. show less

Despite the fact that this book indeed reads like a Sherlock Holmes mystery of sorts, I found this novel utterly enjoyable and read it in only a few sittings. As a fan of historical fiction, I fell in love with the trueness Carr portrayed to the era and setting as well as the characters. Although not a huge fan of murder mysteries or psychological thrillers, Carr drew me into the world of the early 1900s New York effortlessly, kidnapping my attention as I grappled with recent discoveries and show more turning points in the investigation of this tale. I found myself eagerly plotting my next opportunity to read this amazing work and would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys murder mysteries or is interested in forensics/criminology. show less