Books: Cartoon killer
Kim Newman gets on the couch with a Victorian shrink
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The Angel of Darkness
by Caleb Carr
Little, Brown, pounds 15.99
If Caleb Carr's The Alienist felt more like a high-concept pitch than a genuinely felt novel, it was at least an appealing package: an evocative cover, a "soon-to-be- a-major-film" rep and a twist that made a tired subject (serial murder) fresh again. Carr set the story in the 1890s, when few experts believed such creatures existed. Now he has followed up his success in a more traditional way by writing a sequel that hints at further volumes to come.
In The Alienist, the eponymous psychoanalytic pioneer, Dr Laszlo Kreizler, surrounded himself with a cast of eccentric assistants. switches narrators, replacing a cynical newspaperman with a redeemed criminal urchin. That means a few too many Dead End Kids circumlocutions, but otherwise it gives the sequel a fresher voice. This novel also goes after another kind of human villain. The villain of The Alienist was a serial killer, but the Angel of Darkness is a manipulative woman who compounds different brands of feminine rottenness. Carr is compelled to give us a character who alternates between two identities: a serious representative of women driven by intolerable pressure to murder their children, and a Sharon Stone-type supercriminal, who manipulates gangsters, cops and husbands with her irresistible wiles.
The background is the build-up to the Spanish-American War, which Carr sees as a template for American political vice. There's a return visit from Teddy Roosevelt, the guest-star of The Alienist, along with an appearance by the lawyer Clarence Darrow, retained to defend the villainess against a prosecution backed by Kreizler. It's a lengthy thriller, sometimes bogged down with research and melodrama, which would matter less were it not for its central failing: the thinness of Dr Kreizler.
Though Carr has the state of psychiatry circa 1897 off pat, Kreizler seems a cartoon German-accented shrink, upstaged by the villainess and almost everyone else. A sub-plot, the judicial investigation of Kreizler's practice, explains why he is often absent from the stage. But this seems like the sort of device a TV series would come up with to give its star a holiday rather than a rationale for a character's poor showing. If Carr is to continue the series, perhaps it is time for the alienist - like Sherlock Holmes in "The Lion's Mane" - to set aside his Watsons and tell his own tale.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments