Mostly Murders

Book 1 in the Dr. Laszlo Kreizler #1 series.

Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated” not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists.

A dark, historical, psychological thriller exposing the rampant and vicious exploitation of children in the seedy underbelly of New York in the late 1800s. While the upper echelons of society live in style and glamour embodied in the Four Hundred, the richest and most influental New York families, life in the less reputable parts of the city is rife with violence, crime and degradation.

When a young male prostitute is found murdered and mutilated, the newly appointed police commisioner Theodore Roosevelt secretly enlists the alienist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler as the head of a team dedicated to tracking down the murderer using newfangled ideas of psychiatry. Joining Kreizler is his friend John Moore, a journalist of somewhat ill repute after a failed engagement, who functions as the Watson to Kreizler’s Holmes, narrating the story and often feeling left out as Kreizler’s deductions go over his head.

Sara, Roosevelt’s secretary who dreams of becoming New York’s first female police officer provides the team’s knowledge of the female psychology, and the team is rounded out by the young, incorruptible police officers Marcus and Lucius who, like Kreizler, believe in modern, European ideas of forensics and science like fingerprinting, a technique that the American courts as the time refused to acknowledge.

The goal of the team is to provide a psychological profile precise enough to allow them to catch the murderer before any more young boys are killed. But their opponent is a dangerous and sadistic killer, and as the team get to know their quarry better, they themselves become a target, and for some of them, the personal price they have to pay for their involvement becomes impossibly dear.

Their investigation is further hindred by the fact that New York in 1896 is a tough place filled with unchecked violence, oppression, racism and bigotry from the highest of society to the lowest of the slums. As the investigation unfolds, the team invokes the ire of both rich and influential politicians and businessmen and violent and criminal gangsters who all have their own reasons for wanting to shut down the investigation.

Psychological thriller – Historical mystery