Diane's Reviews > The Alienist

This is a clever piece of historical fiction that tickled my interests in both psychology and crime stories.

I listened to this on audio, read by the incomparable George Guidall, and enjoyed the story of police detectives, a reporter and a psychologist (called an Alienist back then) trying to track down a serial killer who was targeting boy prostitutes. The prose isn't perfect — at times the author was guilty of info-dumping details of his historical research — but the story clips along at a good pace and it was a fun vacation read.

Recommended for fans of historical fiction or detective stories.

Favorite Quotes
"Scientists' minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another."

"Change isn't something that most people enjoy, even if it's progressive change."

"[I]n our private moments we Americans are running just as fast and fearfully as we were then, running away from the darkness we know to lie behind so many apparently tranquil household doors, away from the nightmares that continue to be injected into children's skulls by people whom Nature tells them they should love and trust, running ever faster and in ever greater numbers toward those potions, powders, priests, and philosophies that promise to obliterate such fears and nightmares, and ask in return only slavish devotion."

"We are not obligated to provide everyone who comes to this country with a good life," Morgan went on. "We are obligated to provide them with a chance to attain that life, through discipline and hard work. That chance is more than they have anywhere else. That is why they keep coming."