Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences.From the Paperback edition. Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: verminous tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. and will kill again before the hunt is over. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes.

They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. He's a very interesting guy.) He's a masterful storyteller who admits to writing 'The Alienist' with a cinematographer's eye. Caleb Carr is a novelist and military historian, and a screenwriter (The Exorcist prequels, among others). The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. The Alienist is an historical novel, set in New York City in 1896. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or 'alienist.' On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. The year is 1896, the place, New York City.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr