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The Blurb On The Back:
Manhattan, 1909.
On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first – and only – visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents’ home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer’s identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a thrilling journey – into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Jed Rubenfeld’s debut historical crime novel is an ambitious work that combines turn of the century New York aristocracy with the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis and Hamlet’s motivation in the play of the same name. It’s a crisply written affair with an intriguing main character in the form of Stratham Younger (a young man from a good family whose father committed suicide after losing his money in a bank collapse), although I found Hugel and Littlemore less convincing as they’re painted with broader brushstrokes. Exposition of the historical developments that shaped the time are well conveyed and while Freud is more of a side character to this, his observations provide useful boosts to the plot and I greatly enjoyed Rubenfeld’s depiction of the rivalries and petty jealousies among his acolytes together with Jung’s own huge sense of self-regard and professional frustration. The crime element rolls along nicely as Nora and Younger grow closer but I did find the perpetrator easy to guess and the plot starts to become a unglued and melodramatic in the last quarter. That said, it’s a smart novel with a fascinating premise and a likeable main character and for that reason I will read the sequel.
On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first – and only – visit to the United States, a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents’ home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer’s identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a thrilling journey – into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Jed Rubenfeld’s debut historical crime novel is an ambitious work that combines turn of the century New York aristocracy with the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis and Hamlet’s motivation in the play of the same name. It’s a crisply written affair with an intriguing main character in the form of Stratham Younger (a young man from a good family whose father committed suicide after losing his money in a bank collapse), although I found Hugel and Littlemore less convincing as they’re painted with broader brushstrokes. Exposition of the historical developments that shaped the time are well conveyed and while Freud is more of a side character to this, his observations provide useful boosts to the plot and I greatly enjoyed Rubenfeld’s depiction of the rivalries and petty jealousies among his acolytes together with Jung’s own huge sense of self-regard and professional frustration. The crime element rolls along nicely as Nora and Younger grow closer but I did find the perpetrator easy to guess and the plot starts to become a unglued and melodramatic in the last quarter. That said, it’s a smart novel with a fascinating premise and a likeable main character and for that reason I will read the sequel.
