The Alienist

'Part of the book's triumph is that it accommodates big questions without sacrificing anything in accessibility; it recreates a world that is simultaneously alive and haunting.’ – The Independent

Some things never change. It is New York City, 1896. Hypocrisy in high places is rife, police corruption commonplace, and a brutal killer is terrorising young male prostitutes. Unfortunately for Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, the psychological profiling of murderers is a practice still in its infancy.

But as the body count rises, Roosevelt swallows his doubts and turns to the eminent alienist Dr Laszlo Kreizler to put a stop to the bloody murders, giving Kreizler a chance to take him further into the dark heart of criminality, and one step closer to death…

First published in 1994, Caleb Carr’s The Alienist was an immediate bestseller in the United States, deploying Carr’s background as a historian to spectacular effect in its canny fusion of fact and fiction. Three years later, the protagonists returned for its sequel The Angel of Darkness, and The Alienist has now been adapted as a ten-episode series for Netflix.