1) I am currently reading The Alienist by Caleb Carr. This is an excellent book so
far which, deals with a horrendous crime in the late 19th century in New York. The
main characters are Dr. Laszlo Kriezler, the Alienist, or what we would now call a Psychologist,
Mr. Moore, a journalist, Sara Howard, a secretary at the local police department, attempting
to become the first female police officer and Rosevelt, the chief of police. This book is a
very leisurely read, with very detailed character development. If you are at all interested
in crime drama, I would strongly recommend this book as it has some interesting ideas, such as the
origin of fingerprinting.
2) Previous to The Alienist I was reading books by Patterson, author of the recent
hollywood movie Along Came a Spider. I was thouroughly unimpressed with his writing
style in the series involving Dr. Cross (the one I read was Jack and Jill and it is the same series as the movie). I found the plot
fascinating, however I found the development of both the characters and the above mentioned
plot boring, slow and not always reaching a satisfactory point. As well, I found it quite
annoying that Dr. Cross would mention, every other chapter or so, a previous criminal, Dr.
Soneji. Maybe if I had been able to find that story first then the references would have
made sense, however it was simply an unneccessary addition in my opinion. As well, the constant use
of the grammatically incorrect "try and" was enough to make me crazy. However in almost all
current fiction I have found this mistake to be rampant.
However, I did decide to read one other of his books, one not linked to Dr. Cross whatsoever.
I chose to read Hide and Seek which I enjoyed thouroughly. It was very entertaining and
thought provoking. In this story, the main character is a single mother who was abused by her
first husband and ends up shooting him. The story continues with her story about the death of
her fiance (to be second husband) and the death of a third man, her second husband. It truly is
a fascinating story and very readable.