Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1407449 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Customer Reviews

Very Good
I set up this pseudonymous reviewer account because, frankly, I'm sick of fanboys (and girls) throwing up 5 star reviews for their latest flavour-of-the-month read, and drizzling their frothy praise with over-used adjectives like 'brilliant', 'fantastic', 'excellent', effectively robbing these words - which should always be used very carefully - of any real meaning. I can't recall how many bleedin' times I've bought over-hyped books solely on the strength of these reviews only to find I'm holding yet another poorly executed and unoriginal piece of hackneyed rubbish.

So, the campaign to rebalance Amazon reviews starts here. Think of my reviews as the 'Simon Cowell' counterbalance to the meaningless gushing praise for mediocrity that we have too much of here

So then...far be it for me to give anything more than 3 stars for a book. The whole point of my doing this reviewing thing was to name and shame the most awful books that I have the misfortune to come across. But, perhaps it's an opportunity amongst all my negative reviews to bring to people's attention, the occasional really good book. And this is such a rare beast.

Right then...onto the book itself.

Caleb has a very lyrical narrator's voice, pleasing to scan even when he often indulges himself with a lenghy description of a setting or a character. But what really sold this book to me, was the description of the protagonist's investigation into a turn-of-the-century serial killer and the progressive pre-FBI techniques being used by him. Beautifully done that.

Whilst it is a big book and a very sedate read he pulled me, a notoriously impatient reader, through to the very end. And believe me, that is no small achievement.

I decided to give this four stars. I'd have preferred to give it 3.5 stars, but sadly there's no capacity to do that here. Four stars means a book is REALLY REALLY good as far as I'm concerned, and this is NEARLY NEARLY that.

Superb novel written by a historian-professor
Apocryphally, Caleb Carr's publishers thought this was originally a factual historical book when they first received it, but then discovered it moved a little more quickly and (dare I say it) excitingly than a standard academic historical work.

I disagree with the reviewer that thinks it's too long. The beauty about this book is the manner in which it sucks you into the seedy underbelly of New York in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and the research and information we get as readers is startlingly comprehensive: criminology, alienism (nascent psycho-analysis and psychiatry) and detailed corruption. Theodore Roosevelt is name-checked and plays a significant role in the story.

For anyone keen to delve into the best that New York writing can offer (this was a NYT bestseller and sold millions) then I would recommend this unreservedly. It is not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am thriller, more of a totally believable and often surprising journey into the labyrinth of horrific crime that no-one - then, at least - wanted to believe was real. But it was.

If this book were a movie, it'd be sixteen hours long. And dull.
This story is a hideously protracted piece of work with almost no twists of note. And none at all if you exclude the ridiculous.

At 599 pages, the character development is, at best, mundane and the focus is all too often lost on the author's distracting obsession with fine dining. The tale is frequently illogical and far too reliant on absurd deus ex machina.

On the plus side, the description of late-19th century Manhattan is quite interesting for the first hundred pages or so and the author manages to paint his villain, in spite of the horrific nature of the crimes, in a sympathetic light. It is quite an achievement.

All in all though, a mediocre potboiler that is to be endured than enjoyed.