Word: alienist
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Caleb Carr's gaslit narrative style has gained a touch of weight since his agreeable turn-of-the-century detective novel The Alienist (1994), but perhaps no more than success justifies. The reader is inclined to nod indulgently--at the new novel's 629 pages, at the rustle of the writer's smoking jacket and at the swirl of the great man's brandy. That's the illusion--author as Basil Rathbone--that Carr, 42, persuades us to believe...
...works hard at making The Angel of Darkness (Random House; $25.95) as impudent and beguiling as The Alienist and for the most part succeeds. The old gang is back: Miss Howard, the derringer-packing feminist detective; Moore, the boozy New York Times reporter; Cyrus, the piano-playing coachman; the redoubtable Isaacson detective brothers; and Stevie, the reformed street urchin, who later, as a grown man, narrates the adventure. (His urchin usage is not unfailingly convincing, as in "I remember reading in The Principles of Psychology, that doorstop of a book--what Professor William James had written...and which...
...novel psychological theories of the great (and imaginary) psychiatrist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler seem a bit further from the center of things here than they did in The Alienist. True, he affronts received opinion by postulating that a woman, because of her treatment in childhood, may be quite capable of murdering her own children and those of others. He helps trap the woman he has described. But for the trial to go forward he must declare her sane, a judgment that would have seemed as mushy at the beginning of the Freudian era as it does now. For a long stretch...
This plot-centered approach can hurt the novel in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The Alienist, Caleb Carr's best seller about a serial killer on the loose in 1890s New York City (read by Edward Herrmann), makes an engrossing 4 1/2-hour tape. What is left out, however, is a good deal of the historical atmosphere, as well as many details of the laborious murder investigation. As a result, catching this serial killer seems as easy as a jog around Central Park...
...many a modern mystery writer to merge sadism with sociology. If you unleash a serial killer to prey on the young and vulnerable, you'd better add something -- a sermon about society's ills, keen human insight -- so that your movie (The Silence of the Lambs), novel (The Alienist) or TV series doesn't appear irredeemably sordid. If it is done right, author and audience can enjoy the best of both worlds: luridness without guilt...