I admit the fairly high rating may reflect this book hits the spot for me in several ways. I love books that cross genres, and this one is a melange of mystery, suspense/thriller and historical fiction--and one set in my own beloved New York City--albeit that of 1896. I admit I got a kick out of reading of familiar streets and landmarks, and those of the gilded age that have disappeared. This is written as the first person account of John Schuyler Moore, a crime reporter for the New York Times. He's pulled in by his Harvard College classmates Theodore Roosevelt, the future President then a reforming Police Commissioner, and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, an "alienist." A note at the beginning of the book states: "Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be 'alienated,' not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists." Moore and Kreizler form an investigating team to track down a serial killer with the detective Isaacson brothers and Sara Howard, who aspires to be the first female police officer. I love the historical details of the city and of the emerging sciences of forensics and psychology, and how the novel takes us from the slums of the Lower East Side to the Metropolitan Opera's Diamond Horseshoe. This was an engrossing, lively yarn I relished from beginning to end.
