Around two months ago I started this book so I could be finished with this behemoth of a book at 629 pages of tiny print in a tall book. I kept having to put it down to read other books because I was making so little progress in it. The problem was in its Dickosonian prose Which like Dickinson I believe they could both use a good editor. Pretty soon I found myself skimming pages especially when it would go two or more pages without dialogue. I found this to be the case with the book's prequel The Alienist, but not to such a degree. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this story more than I did the one in The Alienist.
After The Alienist, the group scattered to the four winds. Mr. Moore goes back to the paper, the Isaacson brothers go back to the police force where they are at first promoted under Roosevelt then demoted when he leaves, Cyrus goes back to work for Dr. Kreizler as does Stevie who studies under him as well. Dr. Kreizler goes back to his children's institute helping troubled children, while Miss Sara Howard opens up a detective agency in the building they used for their work on the Beechum case.
It's Sara who brings them back together with a case she has stumbled across. The Spanish Diplomat's secretary's wife has come in with a strange tale. She had been to the History Museum and was sitting outside of it on a rainy night when the rain had momentarily let up when someone bashed her on the head enough to knock her out for a short while and take her child. Later that night she saw her child in the arms of a woman on the subway. Oddly enough her husband doesn't want to involve the police but wants to tell people that the child is dead. She refuses to do this and goes to Sara in the hopes that she can do something.
Sara gets a woman artist to draw the picture of the woman that the Senora saw and the Isaccsons examine her wounds and determine that it was made with a pipe by a woman with limited strength. The Doctor surmises that she is likely in a caregiver position so they begin by going around to places where nurses are employed to circulate the picture and they strike gold. A nurse Elsbeth Hunter worked at a Lying-In Hospital for pregnant women and babies and the nurses they talk to say she killed the babies without mothers but the doctor said she valiantly tried to save the children.
They find that she has a husband who fought in the Civil War whom she keeps dependent on morphine. After a visit proves that the child is not there, Dr. Kreitzer believes that there is a hidden room in the basement that the child is behind. One night when Elsbeth, or as she is known by the local gang she hangs with, Libby Hatch goes out to spend the evening with her gang leader boyfriend, Stevie, and the cops set up a way to get inside the house in the hopes of getting the child. But Stevie can't find the way into secret passageway so he does the best he can and gathers as much information about her as he can. And they find out there have been other babies she has kidnapped and killed and something mysterious that happened to her own flesh and blood that were older leading the group to believe they must go to this town she had lived in to find more answers to her past in order to figure out who she is.
Again, this book is in dire need of an editor and you will find yourself skimming. But the plot is so good that I can't say don't read it. It's a fascinating look into the psyche of a serial killer who isn't crazy but continuously kills children, especially babies and you want to know why. I'll finish this book eventually over time while I watch it on TV most likely. It is a well-written book and the characters are incredibly drawn. Told through the eyes of streetwise young Stevie you get to know Sara and her hidden gun that can pop out to do damage if necessary or the Isaacsons who are so smart yet they argue as only brothers can, or Mr. Moore who is a womanizer and gambler yet he cares greatly for the group and for the city, or Dr. Kreitzler who cares deeply about people and often gets hurt, or Cyrus who takes care of the doctor and has to live life as a black man in 1895 New York City. You really come to care about the characters. I just wish this book was around a hundred to a hundred and fifty pages shorter. I give this book three and 1/2 stars out of five stars.
Quotes
But I do find that things what do angered me as a boy still rankle all these years later. So if it seemsthat some of what I’ll have to say in the pages to come doesn’t reflect the mellowing of age, that’s only because I’ve never found that life and memories respond to time the way that tobacco does.
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 12)
All in a rush and for the first time in my life, I felt
like someone over the age of fifteen truly gave a good goddamn about my existence. You don’t really know that you’ve been living
without that commodity until someone makes you aware of the possibility of it; and
when they do it’s a very peculiar sensation.
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 60)
Lazlo, you know what Russian cuisine is like. I mean,
they only eat it over there because they have to.
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 71)
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the only woman who’d had the
nerve to go so far as to rewrite the Bible from the woman’s point of view.
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 113)
I couldn’t tell whether that woman wanted to fuck me or
kill me.
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 168)
“You wouldn’t fall for a fool?” “No miss,” I answered. “Too
busy being one.”
-Caleb Carr (The Angel of Darkness p 220)
Listed on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Darkness-Novel-Laszlo-Kreizler/dp/0345425316/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1595180978&sr=8-1
No comments:
Post a Comment