SOURCE: "Psychology Yesterday," in Book World—Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1994, p. 4.

[Levine is an American novelist and critic. In the review of The Alienist below, he praises Carr's attention to historical detail.]

Eight years after Jack the Ripper terrorized the East End of London, an equally vicious killer was loose in the slums of lower Manhattan, preying on young male prostitutes. The murderer in The Alienist, Caleb Carr's elegant historical novel, is fictional, but the portrait of the Lower East Side with its "disorderly houses," undercover "fly cops" and gangsters called "rabbits" rings true.

The "alienist" is Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, who treats the mentally ill, then thought to be merely alienated from their true natures. Part Sigmund Freud, part Sherlock Holmes, Kreizler constantly challenges the medical (and political) establishment with his radical theories that childhood experiences can influence an adult's actions.

Kreizler's doctrine of "context" appalls both the "free...