About this item
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * SOON TO BE A TNT ORIGINAL SERIES"A first-rate tale of crime and punishment that will keep readers guessing until the final pages." - Entertainment Weekly "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 NewsWhen 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 "A ripsnorter of a plot . . . a fine dark ride." - The Arizona Daily Star"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 "A high-spirited, charged-up and unfailingly smart thriller." - Los Angeles Times "Keeps readers turning pages well past their bedtime." - San Francisco Chronicle "Harrowing, fascinating . . . will please fans of Ragtime and The Silence of the Lambs." - The Flint Journal
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."
