Dr. Laszlo Kreizler Books

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels. The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology-- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before. and will kill again before the hunt is over. Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: verminous tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—the brilliant hero of The Alienist, now a TNT original series—returns in a “whopping thriller” ( The Washington Post ) that showcases Caleb Carr “at his strongest” ( USA Today ). June 1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with the help of a team of trusted companions and a revolutionary application of the principles of his discipline. Kreizler and his friends—high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant (and bickering) detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime—have returned to their former pursuits and tried to forget the horror of the Beecham case. But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara’s aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. It is a case fraught with danger, since Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Their investigation leads the team to a shocking suspect: a woman who appears to the world to be a heroic nurse and a loving mother, but who may in reality be a ruthless murderer of children. Once again, Caleb Carr proves his brilliant ability to re-create the past, both high life and low. Fast-paced and chilling, The Angel of Darkness is a tour de force, a novel of modern evil in old New York. Praise for The Angel of Darkness “A ripping yarn told with verve, intensity, and a feel for historical detail . . . Once again we are careening around the gaslighted New York that Carr knows, and depicts, so well.” — The New York Times Book Review “Gripping . . . Carr is at his strongest, exploring the dark underside of the human psyche and ferreting out the terrors and tragedies that drive men—and women—to kill. . . . In Libby Hatch, Carr has created a villain whose cunning is nearly equal to his detectives’ crime-solving prowess. . . . The mystery is plotted with military precision.” — USA Today “[A] whopping thriller . . . Carr keeps us racing along with him to the very end.” — The Washington Post Book World “Fascinating . . . In a brilliant bit of historical casting, Clarence Darrow, a rising courtroom wizard from Chicago, turns up to defend the villain at a tense upstate New York murder trial.” — Time