The Alienist by Caleb Carr [BOOK CLUB FIRST EDITION / 1994]

The Alienist by Caleb Carr [DR. LASZLO KREIZLER #1]

BOOK CLUB FIRST EDITION [1994] RANDOM HOUSE NY

Hardcover with dust jacket in excellent condition.   Dust jacket has some light shelf wear and a few minuscule sealed edge tears.   Book itself is excellent and reads good as new.  Monogram sticker on inside of cover; looks like it came with the book. 

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.