DWD's Reviews

Caleb Carr's plodding plot mars mystery Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) as an NYC Police Commissioner This is the second Caleb Carr book I've read and it will be the last. Carr follows Charles Dickens in the time period of the book and in the tradition of using 100 words to say what 15 could have said. The plot of The Alienist is painfully slow to develop. Carr sacrifices reader interest for the sake of creating mood. He succeeds in doing both - mood is created and I nearly lost interest. I forced my self to move on, suck it up and finish and I was rewarded with a decent last 100 pages or so. But, the payoff was not early enough for all the build-up. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book to anyone except for the most hardcore fans of mystery, New York City and/or Teddy Roosevelt who puts in an appearance as the Superintendent of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City. That job title was soon after changed to Chief of Police. He held t...

Considering the reputation of this author, I was quite disappointed In order to start with positive thoughts - What does Carr do right with this novel? 1. His vision of the future, published in the year 2000 about the year 2023, does correctly predict that Afghanistan would be a hotspot for the American military due to a fanatical, independently wealthy, international Muslim terrorist. 2. He predicted that the U.S. would become involved with Sadaam Hussein in Iraq over WMDs. (Ironically, in this book, Sadaam tries to nuke France in 2006) 3. Carr does an interesting thing by writing a sci-fi book that sounds Victorian. 4. His beginning themes of capitalism gone amuck are interesting, despite their misguided nature. What does he do wrong? 1. There is little or no character development. Even our main character is minimally fleshed out. He joins a group of anti-information age terrorists with little or no qualms, despite the fact that he knows nothing about them, h...