The Alienist

The other upside of a long flight in coach with a stupid movie Eastbound and a movie I've already seen Westbound is that I've finished my latest read, The Alienist. I must say, after a little rough patch in the beginning, it's actually quite interesing. It's set in the late 19th century (not typically my M.O. for books) and it's basically a murder mystery/historical thriller in which a team of unlikelies hunts down a serial killer. I appreciated how the author was able to truly integrate history of New York in the 1890s with a fiction that was actually engaging. And for the first time (sadly) I realized how incredibly difficult it must be to draft the first word, sentence, paragraph, page of a novel. As the author, you likely feel like your novel is thought-provoking, well-researched, engaging and thoroughly awesome... but how to start it to grab the average reader? I realized, when I finished this book, that I was actually engaged at about page 35 and that is quite awesome. I've said in the past, I give books 100 pages to get me interested. If they don't, I'm out. The fact that this book got it done in 35 pages is amazing and I totally appreciate it.

So, if you're in the mood for a well-researched, well-written and totally psychologically-driven murder mystery, this is a great find. It doesn't seem like it at first, but trust me, it is.

Happy reading!