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This short summary and analysis of The Alienist includes:
- Historical context
- Chapter-by-chapter overviews
- Profiles of the main characters
- Detailed timeline of key events
- Important quotes
- Fascinating trivia
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- Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
In March of 1896, the mutilated body of a prostitute is found on the still-unfinished Williamsburg Bridge—the first discovery in what becomes a string of murders in Lower Manhattan.
In an unorthodox move, Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt enlists a team to track the deranged serial killer: reporter John Schuyler Moore, with his deep knowledge of New York’s criminal underground; alienist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist who specializes in psychopaths and criminals; and Sara Howard, a brave police department secretary.
The group embarks on a groundbreaking endeavor of criminology—building the killer’s profile based on the gory details of the crimes to track him down and put a stop to his carnage.
An evocative literary thriller and New York Times bestseller, The Alienist is being developed for a television series—slated to premiere in late 2017.
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504019385 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Worth Books |
| Publication date: | 04/25/2017 |
| Series: | Smart Summaries |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 30 |
| Sales rank: | 717,601 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
Summary and Analysis of The Alienist
Based on the Book by Caleb Carr
By Worth Books
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1938-5
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Part I: Perception
Chapter 1
President Theodore Roosevelt is laid to rest on a cold winter's day in 1919. John Schuyler Moore half-expects his friend to bound out of the casket, displaying his famous grin and singular laugh. Their mutual friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler decides not to attend his funeral, preferring instead to meet John at Delmonico's restaurant to commemorate their friend's extraordinary life. Together they remember the bizarre events of 1896, when John, Laszlo, and Theodore — assisted by a remarkable team — set out on the trail of a murderous monster.
Chapter 2
On March 3, 1896, John, a crime reporter for the New York Times, is awakened by loud knocking at his front door. Stevie Taggert, Laszlo's errand boy, is there to fetch him. Antic Stevie looks uncharacteristically frightened, and John knows the matter is serious. At the Williamsburg Bridge, John climbs to the murder site, where he finds Detective Patrick Connor, Sergeant Flynn, and Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Laszlo has been there and gone, leaving Theodore to lead John over to the spot where he first sees the devastating sight.
Chapter 3
What John sees is the mutilated body of an adolescent boy, his face made up like a woman's. The eyes are empty sockets that look like they've been eaten out by rodents. The genitals protrude from the mouth, the throat is slashed, and the torso has been gutted. The right hand is almost severed and the buttocks are shorn off. The gruesome scene makes John physically ill.
A policeman identifies the victim as Giorgio Santorelli, a 13-year-old prostitute at the whorehouse Paresis Hall. Theodore wants the owner, Biff Ellison, summoned to his office first thing in the morning. When Flynn refers to the dead boy as "immigrant trash," Theodore flies into a rage at the officer's disrespectful treatment of the victim, warning Flynn that if he doesn't follow his orders to the letter, he'll take his badge.
Laszlo estimates the boy was killed sometime that evening, and suggests they meet at police headquarters in the morning to discuss errors made by the officers at the scene and develop a timeline. The doctor also delivers a cryptic statement that suggests he knows a great deal about the murderer already.
Chapter 4
John describes the early history of Laszlo, a highly sought-after alienist — a child psychiatrist who assesses people's mental state and level of competence in the legal sphere. His reputation in the early days of psychological research is not without controversy. John finds Laszlo in the hallway of the Insane Pavilion at Bellevue, where he is examining a possible suspect for the murder.
Laszlo, whose left arm is shriveled from a childhood injury, has a copy of the Times, and berates John for their music coverage before turning to the case. Standing alongside Laszlo is Cyrus Montrose, his former patient and personal valet. John agrees to assist Laszlo in assessing Henry Wolff, a man who shot his neighbor's 5-year-old daughter. Police found him wandering aimlessly along the East River, and they needed to determine if he is in any way connected to the Santorelli murder.
After the session, Laszlo concludes that, contrary to the police department's determination, Wolff is angry and violent but not insane, and not responsible for the Santorelli killing.
Chapter 5
Back at police headquarters, Laszlo stops to dress down Detective Connor for spreading false rumors about Wolff being a suspect. John is thrilled to see his old childhood neighbor, Sara Howard (to whom he once proposed, receiving a brusque rejection). Sara is a secretary at the department, but her ambitions are loftier: She intends to be the city's first female police officer. Emerging from Theodore's office, the unsavory whorehouse owner Biff Ellison and slick criminal overseer Paul Kelly make a futile attempt to intimidate John and Sara from connecting them in any way to the killing.
Theodore sits behind his massive desk when John and Laszlo enter the office. He and John are friends from childhood — Theodore and Laszlo met later on at Harvard. After some friendly banter, the conversation turns to the Santorelli murder and the unidentified savage who snuffed out the life of a boy on the bridge tower.
Chapter 6
Laszlo tells Theodore that he has withheld information in his report because he fears the police may point the press towards the wrong murderer. They discuss Laszlo 's controversial methods of determining insanity, and Laszlo warns Theodore that another murder is in the making.
He also tells Theodore of two corpses that were found three years prior, preserved in a sealed roof water tower: the Zweig children, Jewish immigrants from Austria. Laszlo reveals that he remembered the case because, like Giorgio, their throats were cut and their eyes were missing.
Theodore then admits that two other bodies fitting the exact pattern have turned up in the last three months — an African immigrant named Millie and another boy named Aaron, both male prostitutes. Laszlo insists that without a deep understanding of a murderer's motivation, the police have no chance of catching him.
Because of Theodore's battles with his corrupt underlings and Laszlo's controversial approach to criminology, Theodore proposes that Laszlo take up an independent investigation, away from headquarters. Laszlo agrees to the plan only if he can have John as his assistant, as well as two loyal detectives, and a trustworthy liaison with the police on his team. Theodore agrees to the terms and the investigation begins.
Chapter 7
Theodore sends Laszlo brothers Sergeant Marcus and Detective Sergeant Lucius Isaacson. Experts in criminal science and forensic medicine, they are part of the tide of Jewish employees Theodore — who admires the "Maccabees"— has installed. They're also familiar with the Zweig case, and impress Laszlo with their initial impression of the exhumed bodies of the Zweig brother and sister and that of the freshly murdered Santorelli.
John and Laszlo make a plan to attend the opera, then go to Delmonico's restaurant to go over the autopsy findings that evening. In the meantime, the new liaison is due for an interview at the doctor's house at seven. If all works out, they'll invite him along. (The Isaacson brothers have already declined an invite, but then accepted since it's "official business.") Cyrus drives John back to his house to change his clothes, and he finds Sara on his doorstep.
Chapter 8
Sara has news: She overheard Connor and Officer Casey discussing a visit to Santorelli's parents, but she's concerned about the blood she saw on Connor's cuff. John and Sara head into the fetid slums of the Lower East Side to check on the Santorellis. In their unspeakably filthy building, they find Mr. Santorelli in bed, severely beaten and holding a roll of cash.
Pretending to be a visiting nurse, Sara questions the couple in a broken Sicilian dialect. Mrs. Santorelli reports that, in addition to Connor and Casey, two men in religious garb — one with white sideburns, and one with spectacles — came to their flat with money for their son's burial. They requested in turn for the Santorellis to refuse any request to exhume their son's body. When Mr. Santorelli refused, the officers beat him to a pulp.
Questioning further, Sara and John learn that Giorgio, a shy boy and a good student, began committing sodomy at school at the age of 7. When his father found out, he beat him regularly. When Giorgio eventually left school and began to cross-dress, his parents threw him out.
Without warning, the door flies open, and two thugs burst into the room, sending Sara and John running down the stairs and into a hall of men holding clubs. Sara pulls out a revolver from her purse, but the men run past them to attack the men. The rumor on the street is that the two men were cops, and the neighborhood doesn't take kindly to police.
From what John knows about the three murder victims so far, they have two things in common: They are troubled youth and the children of immigrants. Sara reveals that Theodore selected her as the liaison, and begs John to keep it secret. She'll spring it on Laszlo that evening.
Chapter 9
Welcoming John into Laszlo's house is Mary Palmer, Laszlo's pretty housekeeper and, like Stevie and Cyrus, a former patient. She was convicted for tying up her father (who sexually abused her) and then setting the house on fire. When Sara arrives in an evening gown, Laszlo is puzzled — until he realizes Sara must be Theodore's appointed liaison.
En route by carriage to the Metropolitan Opera House for the performance, John and Sara recount the afternoon's events, convincing Laszlo that Sara's grit makes her the right person for the job.
At the opera, John and Sara sit in Laszlo's box, and are joined by Theodore, Mayor William L. Strong, and then J. Pierpont Morgan. Since the mayor isn't a fan of Laszlo or his methods, Theodore suggests that Laszlo, John, and Sara avoid being seen in public together in the future to avoid any intimation that Laszlo is operating a secret investigation.
Chapter 10
At Delmonico's "uptown" on Fifth Avenue later that evening, the Isaacsons are seated and start their report as soon as the rest of the group arrives. First, they found Santorelli's cause of death to be strangulation, not a slit throat. Second, a hunting knife likely made the marks around the eye sockets, proving they were cut out — although they can't yet explain why. Third, the skull was fractured from above, indicating the killer is around six-foot-two.
They present a photograph of an adult fingerprint that was lifted from the finger of Sofia Zweig using a new method called "dactyloscopy" (fingerprinting), which can identify and place a person — with a criminal record — at the scene of a crime. Impressed with their work, Laszlo invites the detectives to join their team.
After dinner, John heads over to Paresis Hall to make his own contribution to the case.
Chapter 11
At Paresis Hall, Biff Ellison isn't happy to see John — who is, after all, a crime reporter — until John assures Biff he'll keep his name out of the papers. Biff allows John to look around upstairs, but warns him not to speak to anyone. John finds a boy who was there the night Giorgio — whom the boy calls by his working name, Gloria — died. The boy says he saw Giorgio go into his room, but is sure Giorgio never came out.
John examines the room: from the window, it's quite a drop. As he turns around, he becomes dizzy and realizes he's been drugged — clearly by Biff, who'd plied him with a beer during their chat. Just before John loses consciousness, Stevie bounds into the room, brandishing a piece of wood covered with rusty nails.
Chapter 12
John wakes up two nights and a day later, on the couch of the investigation's new headquarters. Sara has to do an errand, and leaves Cyrus to fill John in on what happened. Apparently, Stevie saw that John was a bit tipsy after dinner, so he tailed him to Paresis Hall and waited outside. The police started hassling Stevie, so he ran upstairs to get away from the officers, only to find John in a precarious predicament. It becomes clear that Stevie saved John's life — and Laszlo immediately puts John back to work.
Chapter 13
After John and Laszlo eliminate one suspect, they return to headquarters. Apparently, two men fitting the description of the ex-cops from Santorelli's apartment showed up at the operating theater. There, the brothers were examining the two male prostitutes Millie and Aaron, whose deaths matched those of the Zweig children and Giorgio. Posing as cemetery officials, the men demanded the autopsies stop immediately. Since the Isaacsons had gathered all the evidence needed, they complied.
According to the brothers, both bodies display the same knife marks around the eyes as the Zweigs and Giorgio. Their imaginary killer's profile is taking shape, but Laszlo reminds them that they must see the world through the murderer's eyes. The team doesn't have to wait long for the next murder: A call soon comes in that another child has been found.
Part II: Association
Chapter 14
A body is found at Castle Garden in Battery Park, a stone structure previously used as a fort during the War of 1812, then an immigration center until the creation of Ellis Island. It's in the process of being transformed into an aquarium, and the watchman found the corpse on the roof at around one o'clock in the morning. At the edge of the roof facing the waterfront, Lucius takes photographs.
An officer on the scene has already identified the victim as one of the boy-whores from the Golden Rule Pleasure Club; he is dark-haired and has Semitic features. The postmortem reveals identical injuries to those of Santorelli's, except this boy's buttocks were left intact.
Lucius and Marcus find a fingerprint on the chimney matching the one found on Sophia Zweig's finger. There are marks and chips on the outside of the structure, as well. Given the murderer's fondness for killing out in the open (specifically on rooftops), they theorize that he may want to be caught. They also believe the victims knew their killer — could he be a regular customer at one or more "disorderly" houses? Suddenly, they see a large crowd of ragged people carrying torches, many with children, in Battery Park coming their way. They have "all the makings of a mob."
Chapter 15
Though the crowd is yet not violent, Cyrus has an explanation for their presence: The same officer who identified the body has been sharing the information about the murder, and the crowd is enraged that immigrant children, alone, are being targeted. Theodore calms the crowd and helps disperse them, while the team goes out the back gate. Passing an elegant brougham on the corner, John sees Paul Kelly inside. The mob was his work, that's for certain.
Back at team headquarters, Mary's presence is a surprise — she is cooking breakfast for the crew. Though John is thrilled, Mary draws a stern gaze from Laszlo. He asks her to return home, and tells John he wants Mary to know nothing of the case for "various reasons." John also observes Sara and Laszlo have a cryptic conversation about Mary.
With the team gathered around the chalkboard, Laszlo writes down the traits each murder shares, one of which is that they all occur near water. Laszlo presses Sara to understand that, though she views the crimes as brutal, to the killer they may actually seem like acts of mercy to his childhood self, and stem from rage at the violence committed on him. Sara's assignment is to assemble the profile of a woman who may have fostered such rage.
Once she and John leave, Sara looks up at the building where Laszlo is still working, and confides that she believes Laszlo's interest in the case is somehow personal. She's also convinced that Mary's in love with the doctor.
Chapter 16
Laszlo and Sara have set out to interview a woman who attempted to kill her own children on Long Island, so John invites Mary out for an afternoon at Koster and Bial's vaudeville show. Mary is so fascinating and pleasant that John has difficulty imagining such a lovely girl murdering her father. It gives him an idea, however: that Mary's case may parallel their own.
Laszlo is back when they return, but shows no signs of jealousy.
Chapter 17
Since the killer enters and exits the boy's rooms through the window, Marcus figures he must carry the boys away — indicating he's powerfully built with expert climbing or mountaineering skills. Marcus goes back to the bridge tower and finds marks and rope fibers identical to those outside Giorgio's room. He also finds a piton in the grass at Castle Garden, indicating the killer rappels down the walls, taking out the pitons as he descends.
He dusts for prints and finds a match with the chimney print. He theorizes that since mountaineering isn't popular in the United States, but is in Europe, the killer is most likely an English, Swiss, or German immigrant.
John and Marcus head to the Golden Rule Pleasure Club, where the yet-unnamed victim in Castle Garden worked. The owner, Scotch Ann, after assuring them she has told the cops all she knows, informs them that the victim was a Syrian boy named Ali ibn-Ghazi, but called Fatima. His father had sold him to Scotch Ann. John asks one of Fatima's fellow boy-whores if he recalls seeing Fatima leave his room the night he was killed. Sure enough, they find rope fibers and marks leading down from the roof to the victim's bedroom. The killer must have to carry a bag to hold his equipment.
John mumbles under his breath that the killer has "the confidence of the devil," and a small voice behind him corrects him: "Not the devil, sir," he says. "A saint."
(Continues...)
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