Print List Price: | $17.00 |
Kindle Price: | $9.99 Save $7.01 (41%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
The Alienist: A Novel (Dr. Lazlo Kreizler Book 1) Kindle Edition
“Caleb Carr’s rich period thriller takes us back to the moment in history when the modern idea of the serial killer became available to us.”—The Detroit News
When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.
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.
Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences.
Praise for The Alienist
“[A] delicious premise . . . Its settings and characterizations are much more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill thrillers that line the shelves in bookstores.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Mesmerizing.”—Detroit Free Press
“The method of the hunt and the disparate team of hunters lift the tale beyond the level of a good thriller—way beyond. . . . A remarkable combination of historical novel and psychological thriller.”—The Buffalo News
“Engrossing.”—Newsweek
“Gripping, atmospheric . . . intelligent and entertaining.”—USA Today
“A high-spirited, charged-up and unfailingly smart thriller.”—Los Angeles Times
“Keeps readers turning pages well past their bedtime.”—San Francisco Chronicle
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateOctober 24, 2006
- File size1761 KB
- The Angel of Darkness: Book 2 of the Alienist: A Novel (Dr. Lazlo Kreizler)2Kindle Edition$12.99$12.99
- Every human being must find his own way to cope with such severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.Highlighted by 1,116 Kindle readers
- “The degenerative processes in children have their chief encouragement in the equally defective home surroundings.”Highlighted by 566 Kindle readers
- Yet the profound irony was that our killer believed he was providing himself with just those things: vengeance for the child he had been, protection for the tortured soul he had become.Highlighted by 486 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
John Hiett, Iowa City P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Caleb Carr’s rich period thriller takes us back to the moment in history when the modern idea of the serial killer became available to us . . . [and] tracks the efforts of a team of farsighted investigators working frantically to solve a string of hideous murders. . . . Absorbing . . . suspenseful . . . gratifying.”—The Detroit News
“A high-spirited, charged-up and unfailingly smart thriller.”—Los Angeles Times
“You can smell the fear in the air.”—The New York Times
“Keeps readers turning pages well past their bedtime.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Engrossing.”—Newsweek
“A ripsnorter of a plot . . . a fine dark ride.”—The Arizona Daily Star
“[A] delicious premise . . . Its settings and characterizations are much more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill thrillers that line the shelves in bookstores.”—The Washington Post Book World
“The method of the hunt and the disparate team of hunters lift the tale beyond the level of a good thriller—way beyond. . . . A remarkable combination of historical novel and psychological thriller.”—The Buffalo News
“Mesmerizing.”—Detroit Free Press
“Remarkable . . . The reader is taken on a whirlwind tour of the Gilded Age metropolis, climbing up tenement stairs, scrambling across rooftops, and witnessing midnight autopsies. . . . A breathtaking, finely crafted mystery.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Gripping, atmospheric . . . intelligent and entertaining.”—USA Today
“Harrowing, fascinating . . . will please fans of Ragtime and The Silence of the Lambs.”—The Flint Journal
From the Publisher
"You can smell the fear in the air." --The New York Times
"Gripping, atmospheric, intelligent, and entertaining." --USA Today
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
January 8th, 1919
Theodore is in the ground.
The words as I write them make as little sense as did the sight of his coffin descending into a patch of sandy soil near Sagamore Hill, the place he loved more than any other on earth. As I stood there this afternoon, in the cold January wind that blew off Long Island Sound, I thought to myself: Of course it’s a joke. Of course he’ll burst the lid open, blind us all with that ridiculous grin and split our ears with a high-pitched bark of laughter. Then he’ll exclaim that there’s work to do—“action to get!”—and we’ll all be martialed to the task of protecting some obscure species of newt from the ravages of a predatory industrial giant bent on planting a fetid factory on the little amphibian’s breeding ground. I was not alone in such fantasies; everyone at the funeral expected something of the kind, it was plain on their faces. All reports indicate that most of the country and much of the world feel the same way. The notion of Theodore Roosevelt being gone is that—unacceptable.
In truth, he’d been fading for longer than anyone wanted to admit, really since his son Quentin was killed in the last days of the Great Butchery. Cecil Spring-Rice once droned, in his best British blend of affection and needling, that Roosevelt was throughout his life “about six”; and Herm Hagedorn noted that after Quentin was shot out of the sky in the summer of 1918 “the boy in Theodore died.” I dined with Laszlo Kreizler at Delmonico’s tonight, and mentioned Hagedorn’s comment to him. For the remaining two courses of my meal I was treated to a long, typically passionate explanation of why Quentin’s death was more than simply heartbreaking for Theodore: he had felt profound guilt, too, guilt at having so instilled his philosophy of “the strenuous life” in all his children that they often placed themselves deliberately in harm’s way, knowing it would delight their beloved father. Grief was almost unbearable to Theodore, I’d always known that; whenever he had to come to grips with the death of someone close, it seemed he might not survive the struggle. But it wasn’t until tonight, while listening to Kreizler, that I understood the extent to which moral uncertainty was also intolerable to the twenty-sixth president, who sometimes seemed to think himself Justice personified.
Kreizler…He didn’t want to attend the funeral, though Edith Roosevelt would have liked him to. She has always been truly partial to the man she calls “the enigma,” the brilliant doctor whose studies of the human mind have disturbed so many people so profoundly over the last forty years. Kreizler wrote Edith a note explaining that he did not much like the idea of a world without Theodore, and, being as he’s now sixty-four and has spent his life staring ugly realities full in the face, he thinks he’ll just indulge himself and ignore the fact of his friend’s passing. Edith told me today that reading Kreizler’s note moved her to tears, because she realized that Theodore’s boundless affection and enthusiasm—which revolted so many cynics and was, I’m obliged to say in the interests of journalistic integrity, sometimes difficult even for friends to tolerate—had been strong enough to touch a man whose remove from most of human society seemed to almost everyone else unbridgeable.
Some of the boys from the Times wanted me to come to a memorial dinner tonight, but a quiet evening with Kreizler seemed much the more appropriate thing. It wasn’t out of nostalgia for any shared boyhood in New York that we raised our glasses, because Laszlo and Theodore didn’t actually meet until Harvard. No, Kreizler and I were fixing our hearts on the spring of 1896—nearly a quarter-century ago!—and on a series of events that still seems too bizarre to have occurred even in this city. By the end of our dessert and Madeira (and how poignant to have a memorial meal in Delmonico’s, good old Del’s, now on its way out like the rest of us, but in those days the bustling scene of some of our most important encounters), the two of us were laughing and shaking our heads, amazed to this day that we were able to get through the ordeal with our skins; and still saddened, as I could see in Kreizler’s face and feel in my own chest, by the thought of those who didn’t.
There’s no simple way to describe it. I could say that in retrospect it seems that all three of our lives, and those of many others, led inevitably and fatefully to that one experience; but then I’d be broaching the subject of psychological determinism and questioning man’s free will—reopening, in other words, the philosophical conundrum that wove irrepressibly in and out of the nightmarish proceedings, like the only hummable tune in a difficult opera. Or I could say that, during the course of those months, Roosevelt, Kreizler, and I, assisted by some of the best people I’ve ever known, set out on the trail of a murderous monster and ended up coming face-to-face with a frightened child; but that would be deliberately vague, too full of the “ambiguity” that seems to fascinate current novelists and which has kept me, lately, out of the bookstores and in the picture houses. No, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to tell the whole thing, going back to that first grisly night and that first butchered body; back even further, in fact, to our days with Professor James at Harvard. Yes, to dredge it all up and put it finally before the public—that’s the way.
The public may not like it; in fact, it’s been concern about public reaction that’s forced us to keep our secret for so many years. Even the majority of Theodore’s obituaries made no reference to the event. In listing his achievements as president of the Board of Commissioners of New York City’s Police Department from 1895 to 1897, only the Herald—which goes virtually unread these days—tacked on uncomfortably, “and of course, the solution to the ghastly murders of 1896, which so appalled the city.” Yet Theodore never claimed credit for that solution. True, he had been open-minded enough, despite his own qualms, to put the investigation in the hands of a man who could solve the puzzle. But privately he always acknowledged that man to be Kreizler.
He could scarcely have done so publicly. Theodore knew that the American people were not ready to believe him, or even to hear the details of the assertion. I wonder if they are now. Kreizler doubts it. I told him I intended to write the story, and he gave me one of his sardonic chuckles and said that it would only frighten and repel people, nothing more. The country, he declared tonight, really hasn’t changed much since 1896, for all the work of people like Theodore, and Jake Riis and Lincoln Steffens, and the many other men and women of their ilk. We’re all still running, according to Kreizler—in our private moments we Americans are running just as fast and fearfully as we were then, running away from the darkness we know to lie behind so many apparently tranquil household doors, away from the nightmares that continue to be injected into children’s skulls by people whom Nature tells them they should love and trust, running ever faster and in ever greater numbers toward those potions, powders, priests, and philosophies that promise to obliterate such fears and nightmares, and ask in return only slavish devotion. Can he truly be right…?
But I wax ambiguous. To the beginning, then!
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000JMKV9Y
- Publisher : Random House; Reprint edition (October 24, 2006)
- Publication date : October 24, 2006
- Language : English
- File size : 1761 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 608 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0525510273
- Best Sellers Rank: #45,105 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Caleb Carr is an American novelist and military historian. He has worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs Quarterly, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and taught military history, including World Military History, the History of American Intelligence, and Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, at Bard College.
He was born in Manhattan, and for the majority of his life he lived on the Lower East Side of that city, spending his summers and many weekends at his family's home in Cherry Plain, New York. In 2000, he purchased his own property, known as Misery Mountain, in Cherry Plain; and in 2006 he moved there permanently.
He was educated at St. Luke's School and Friends Seminary in New York, Kenyon College, and New York University, where he gained a degree in Military and Diplomatic History.
He is the author of ten books, several of which, most notably the historical thriller The Alienist, have become international best-sellers and prize-winners, and his work has been translated into over two dozen languages. His book, The Lessons of Terror, concerned one of his non-fiction areas of specialization, terrorism, and became a controversial yet standard volume in the literature of that subject.
He has appeared before the House Joint Subcommittee on National Security, was a featured speaker at a closed-door Defense Department conference on the War on Terrorism, and made regular appearances on almost all television networks during the American invasion of Iraq.
Asked what fiction writers have influenced him the most, he includes Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, William Gibson, and Michael Crichton.
His non-fiction influences he cites as "eclectic and too numerous to list."
Carr has also worked extensively in the theater, and in movies and televison; in the latter capacity, he spent several years in Los Angeles; his last feature script attracted Liam Neeson, John Frankenheimer, and Vittorio Storaro to sign on; when Frankenheimer suddenly and tragically died, however, the project fell apart, and Carr returned to New York.
In 2015, Paramount Television announced that it would create a series based on The Alienist for Turner Network Television (TNT), the first season to be directed by Cary Fukunaga.
He now lives with his Siberian cat, Masha. She is, he says, "very beautiful and very ferocious."
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The characters draw you right in to the story, Excellent ‼️‼️😀
I read a mass-market edition of The Alienist. In that format, it was just at 600 pages. Unless a book is really wonderful, I tend to wear out when a book is that long. Not this one. It was a gripping read. I was sorry to close it up each night, and anxious to begin again the next evening. I'm also looking forward to reading the second in the series, "The Angel of Darkness".
The narrator in The Alienist is John Moore, a crime reporter. He becomes the Dr. Watson to his long-time Sherlockian friend, Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, an "alienist", as psychiatrists were then known since mentally-ill people were considered to be alien from themselves and society. Aided by their college friend, Theodore Roosevelt, who was the NYC Police Commissioner--- at a time when the extremely corrupt NYC police force was the focus of Teddy's clean-up efforts---Moore and Kreizler are provided with a small team of people who try to find a child-prostitute serial killer. You can read all these details in other reviewers' comments. I'll focus now on why I liked the book so much.
As always, story first. This one could have been a fairly routine serial-killer one, but the twists provided by the time period, the NYC setting and historical events, and the very interesting killer-finding team made it wonderfully enjoyable. Next, I thought that the writing was superb. Carr's phasing and cadence gave the narrative a turn-of-the-century feel. If you think about the letters of a Confederate soldier, or any of Dickens' or Bronte's books, you get what I mean. I forgot that I was reading something written by a contemporary writer. The story was delivered in a masterful way, with each chapter ending with a set-up for the next one. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I also loved the characters, every single one of them. (Each of them had an engaging back-story, and I could imagine them showing up again in another book.) I even felt the compassion for the killer that Dr. Kreizler encourages his team members to feel. A thoroughly good read, and a book and an author I can't believe I'm only now discovering. Highly recommended.
1. Character development: most of the novels I read that are set during this general period try so hard to maintain the Victorian mindset of "proper" behavior that it ends of being difficult to feel like you really know the characters because they display limited emotion. This novel, on the other hand, does a fantastic job with individual character development, and you also feel like the characters care about each other. This is all accomplished while still keeping the characters true to the time period.
2. Flow and story progression: some people have dropped a star on their reviews because they believe the descriptions of places, clothing, etc are too long. I guess you can't please everyone, but I didn't find this to be the case at all. In fact, I was shocked to see that some people did find this to be the case. I found the descriptions were just enough to keep you embedded in the story without going so far as to be distracting. This is a longer book than a lot of what you find, so maybe some people prefer shorter books, but I was very happy with the length- I thought all of the text contributed either directly to the story, or to mood and/or character development. There really wasn't anything in the book I would cut.
3. Romance: Or more specifically, the lack thereof. I know that many people, if not most, prefer to have some romance in whatever book they are reading, but for those of us that don't, we really have little to choose from. In fact, I recently realized that for quite awhile now I have been sort of subconsciously avoiding books with female leads because they so often end up with strong romantic plotlines. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it's just a pain if that isn't what you're looking for. I cannot tell you how happy I was to find that there is no big romantic theme in this novel. One of the three main characters is female, but she is well developed and relatable, while still being believable, and at least for me it was refreshing to read a novel with a female who had working relationships with the other two male leads that were NOT romantic. This is just a matter of preference, but it was a huge selling point for me.
I will definitely read this again (and again). I won't go into any detail here about the follow-up to this one (The Angel of Darkness), except to say that although I enjoyed that one immensely as well, I thought this was the better of the two. The second novel changes narrators, which leads to a favorite character being described completely inconsistently to this first novel (and for no reason), and there are some lengthy descriptions of political situations that I have to admit do detract from the overall flow of the second novel. I'd give the second novel four stars in comparison to this one, but honestly it would still get five stars in comparison to much of the rest of what I've read.
Top reviews from other countries
I really loved this book, I found it refreshing and different from anything else I’d read in the last couple of years. There isn't usually such a strong focus on psychology and the mind in stories like this but ultimately it was psychology and other types of criminal science that are the true hero of this book. I only found out this book existed after stumbling across the Netflix series and seeing it was linked to a book, usually I’ve read the book and then notice any TV and Film adaptations.
I was thrown into the setting of this book, 1896 New York, life is not a simple, rife with racism, poverty and corruption (especially in the Police Force) New York is not a safe place to be. This is bought to life in the writing, I loved the historical facts and references made on this great city throughout the book. Transporting us straight into the streets, during journey’s in cabs the author directs us street by street point out monuments and important features of the New York culture at the time. The same hustle and bustle of the New York we know now but in an earlier time. We find out about the segregation within the city as the immigrant population increases and more cultures arrive. Throughout the book you understand the socio-economic status of New York.
The Plot of this book is complex and full of mystery, for every question we get an answer to even more question arise. The whole story was tense and I really enjoyed the sense of discovery that the characters had with each step closer they got to identifying the murder. Not only was there the mystery of the murders but also the cloak and dagger behaviour of our band of crime fighters to keep the investigation away from the corrupt police department. I loved how accurately the mistrust and disgust of psychology criminal profiling and forensic was portrayed and created the basis for this story, portraying how other mavericks of science may have paved the way for newer, more modern detective processes. Having such a strong sense of setting really helped the flow of this plot.
The thing I enjoyed the most was simply how anonymous the killer was throughout a large chunk of the book allowing for the focus to be on the investigation. We literally go from knowing nothing about them to slowly building a picture and we as the reader are taken through each step, seeing the early forensic techniques like handwriting analysis and fingerprint analysis being bought to life with a small bit of background on where these stemmed from is just so interesting. This will really suit some readers, people like me who really enjoy the how’s. If you aren’t driven by detail and/or interested in the scientific detail this book likely won’t be for you, the author hasn’t dumbed the process.
I was drawn to Dr Laszlo Kreizler (our MC), his single mindedness, determination and belief in his craft is inspiring. He’s presented as almost unlikeable due to his peculiar nature and high intellect. He is the driving force of his team and selecting what is arguably his best friend, crime reporter, John Moore who due to the nature of his job can easily get into crime scenes and find out information. Sarah, the Secretary to the Police Commission who uses her position to locate information from Police sources and the Isaacson brothers, two Jewish Detectives who are shunned not only for their religious beliefs but their forward thinking ideas on detective work. Moore was probably the character out of the whole group that I struggled at times to get on with, sometimes finding him frustrating or a little to moany. I loved that the author put a pioneering female character into this book. Sarah is fierce and dreams of being a detective, she is the first of two women to be hired by the Police and sees the work Kreizler and the others are doing as a way to show a woman is more than capable.
Summary
This book is dark, with danger and a hella lot of mystery. It has a lot to offer people interested in Historical Mystery Fiction, however, I’ll be the first to admit the way this book is written can be hard going, if you don’t have a keen interest in psychology, criminal psychology and/or historical mysteries this could be a hard read for you. The action is also spread out with a lot of effort going into taking you through the investigation. The murders are also excessively gruesome and gory, so you need to be prepared to read for awful things, if you can’t cope with children under 15 being murdered this isn’t the book for you.
For me the writing style although tough at times added to the authenticity and I ended this book feeling like I’d been with the characters every step of the way. My degree is in Psychology too which is another reason I enjoyed this book so much because I knew the theory they were talking about. Overall, this book just fit me as a person and I’d recommend you try it.