The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr's plodding plot mars mystery

Published in 1994.

Winner of the 1995 Anthony Award.

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 that position from 1895-1897.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
as an NYC Police Commissioner

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

Reviewed on June 8, 2008.

Killing Time by Caleb Carr

Considering the reputation of this author, I was quite disappointed

Originally published in 2000.

In order to start with positive thoughts - What does Carr do right with Killing Time?

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 Saddam Hussein in Iraq over WMDs. (Ironically, in this book, Saddam 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, he's confused by their cause. We learn little about these people except that they know everything about him - and they don't share any of their information with the reader.

2. This team of people is like the supersmart Justice League - they all have wonderful skills and abilities that complement one another - but we know precious little about them or their motivations. Plus, the only skill exhibited by one of these 'super friends' just seems to be that he can cook gourmet meals in a hurry.

3. They have a super airplane/submarine that can make itself invisible. It is nearly untouchable and is practically unbeatable. Also, it gets real boring after a while. There's no challenge that they cannot overcome since they always have their super ship.

4. This book would have been much, much, much more interesting if Carr would have expanded on each of these 'superfriends' and explained their motivations. Carr could have let us see this world through all of their eyes and made it more interesting than the straight-ahead approach he often uses. Carr only approaches this with two characters - what about the rest?

So, if I were giving it a grade, I'd give it a solid 'D' - weak character development and presence of the 'super ship' are offset by initial interesting themes and visions of the future. If Carr were a student in my class, I'd send him back to do a lot of revising.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Killing Time.

Reviewed on June 29, 2005.