kowalkat 's review for:

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
1.0

I was driven to finish this only by my hatred of this work, thankfully it is short enough that wasn’t much of a task.

It’s insulting that this book as been described as a “modern classic.” Neither the prose nor story are worth such praise. The author managed to take an interesting premise and muddle it so completely that it was boring.

I will forgive the “forensic psychology” part for being so bad only because it was written in the 90s, depicting historical opinions. But god it was painful. Predictable. Overtired stereotypes.