Meeting: Community Room | Knowlton Library
Title:The Alienist + DVD
Author: Caleb Carr
Title available at the Knowlton Library. Discussion brochure also provided with checkout. Brochure will also be available in electronic format via Book Lovers Newsletter.
The year is 1896, New York City. New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or 'alienist.' On the Williamsburg Bridge, they view the mutilated body of an adolescent boy. The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, police department secretary. The unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology--amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before and will kill again before the hunt is over.