---
product_id: 113583250
title: "The Alienist: A Novel (Dr. Lazlo Kreizler Book 1) Kindle Edition"
brand: "caleb carr"
price: "$20.32"
currency: USD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/113583250-the-alienist-a-novel-dr-lazlo-kreizler-book-1-kindle
store_origin: US
region: United States of America
---

# The Alienist: A Novel (Dr. Lazlo Kreizler Book 1) Kindle Edition

**Brand:** caleb carr
**Price:** $20.32
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** The Alienist: A Novel (Dr. Lazlo Kreizler Book 1) Kindle Edition by caleb carr
- **How much does it cost?** $20.32 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/113583250-the-alienist-a-novel-dr-lazlo-kreizler-book-1-kindle)

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Gripping Read; Fantastic Story
  

*by E***S on Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2013*

The Alienist is an historical novel, set in New York City in 1896.  Caleb Carr is a novelist and military historian, and a screenwriter (The Exorcist prequels, among others).  (I encourage you to look up Carr's bio.  He's a very interesting guy.)  He's a masterful storyteller who admits to writing "The Alienist" with a cinematographer's eye.  I'm digressing a bit to relate that, with the recent and very enjoyable Sherlock Holmes movies (starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law) in my memory, I couldn't help but see many of the scenes from the movie transposed over those of the book.  Nor could I help but try to cast "The Alienist" in my mind.  Additionally, the cable networks have been very interested in this historical period recently.  "Coppers" is series that's caught my husband's interest.  Another movie example is Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York".  With these movies and shows having so captured the movie and TV watchers' interests, I thought that surely there must be an "Alienist" movie in the making, especially since the book is 20 years old.  I found that indeed there WAS a movie in the making, but "was" is all it will be.  Scott Rudin (who's responsible for dozens of wonderful movies, including No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and the brand new and very good Captain Phillips) had purchased the movie rights before the book was published.  Alas, why Rudin didn't hire Carr as the screenwriter, I cannot fathom, but he didn't.  Apparently, he and Paramount hired $2M worth of screenwriters who tried for several years to write the adaptation, but Rudin changed the characters' and the focus of the movie---utterly ruined it, from what I read.  Sad.  It would have been a great(!) movie.I read a mass-market edition of The Alienist.  In that format, it was just at 600 pages.  Unless a book is really wonderful, I tend to wear out when a book is that long.  Not this one.  It was a gripping read.  I was sorry to close it up each night, and anxious to begin again the next evening.  I'm also looking forward to reading the second in the series, "The Angel of Darkness".The narrator in The Alienist is John Moore, a crime reporter.  He becomes the Dr. Watson to his long-time Sherlockian friend, Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, an "alienist", as psychiatrists were then known since mentally-ill people were considered to be alien from themselves and society.  Aided by their college friend, Theodore Roosevelt, who was the NYC Police Commissioner--- at a time when the extremely corrupt NYC police force was the focus of Teddy's clean-up efforts---Moore and Kreizler are provided with a small team of people who try to find a child-prostitute serial killer.  You can read all these details in other reviewers' comments.  I'll focus now on why I liked the book so much.As always, story first.  This one could have been a fairly routine serial-killer one, but the twists provided by the time period, the NYC setting and historical events, and the very interesting killer-finding team made it wonderfully enjoyable.  Next, I thought that the writing was superb.  Carr's phasing and cadence gave the narrative a turn-of-the-century feel.  If you think about the letters of a Confederate soldier, or any of Dickens' or Bronte's books, you get what I mean.  I forgot that I was reading something written by a contemporary writer.  The story was delivered in a masterful way, with each chapter ending with a set-up for the next one.  I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.  I also loved the characters, every single one of them.  (Each of them had an engaging back-story, and I could imagine them showing up again in another book.)  I even felt the compassion for the killer that Dr. Kreizler encourages his team members to feel.  A thoroughly good read, and a book and an author I can't believe I'm only now discovering.  Highly recommended.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A remarkable historical thriller
  

*by B***S on Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2020*

The Alienist is an odd book.  It's a mystery thriller about a quest to identify a rather ghastly serial killer, but the murders ultimately seem to play a secondary role to the novel's exploration of the political and cultural milieu of late 19th Century New York and the science--then only in its infancy--of forensic psychology.  While that might sound like a criticism, it's actually meant as praise.  While thrillers about serial killers are a dime a dozen, The Alienist is (at least in my experience) unique in its particular application of the historical perspective.Readers can expect to find a cast of both entirely fictional characters like Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (the titular "alienist," or psychologist) as well as recognizable historical figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan.  The blend of historical and scientific accuracy with a fictitious murder mystery makes for an engaging read that should be applauded both for its ability to thrill the reader and for its ability to convey relatively large amounts of what might otherwise seem like obscure scientific or historical minutiae without ever becoming needlessly dry.While the novel is painstakingly accurate in its historical details, the interaction of that history with the fictional story occasionally strains credulity, but never to a point as to seriously hamper the reader's enjoyment.  The state of psychological science is, for instance, accurate to the novel's period, even though the characters' ability to harness that science for their investigative purposes is elevated a bit beyond what seems entirely likely.  Similarly, in order for the novel's political context to seem relevant to the story, the author had to create certain conspiracies that, while they make for thoroughly enjoyable reading, leave the reader occasionally pondering their plausibility.Despite these minor quibbles, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel.  The characters seem entirely believable (if occasionally ahead of their time) and the reader will enjoy unraveling the mysteries of the human mind in parallel to discovering new threads in the mystery of the novel's murders.  Plot developments are perfectly timed to keep the reader engaged without ever getting ahead of the author and the climax, while it felt a little bit rushed in comparison to the rest of the novel, is completely satisfying.  I'd recommend giving it a read.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Interesting book
  

*by R***J on Reviewed in India on May 4, 2024*

The books looks exactly like the pic shown and is a really interesting story as well

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*Last updated: 2026-03-05*