Why a Booktrail?
1890s: A child disappears and a dark mystery appears…
The Angel of Darkness (The Alienist 2)
What you need to know before your trail
A year after the events that took place in the bestselling THE ALIENIST, the cast of characters are again brought together to investigate a crime committed in the heady days of New York in the 1890s, this time narrated by the orphan Stevie Taggert.
A young child, the daughter of Spanish diplomats, disappears. It seems she has been abducted but no ransom note is received and the detectives Isaacson quickly discover that a nurse, Elspeth Hunter, is probably the kidnapper.
They also discover that Hunter has been a little too closely connected with the death of three other infants. But what are her motives? She married a fortune, and although she is connected to some fairly rough villains this crime does not fit their modus operandi. Is it something as ‘simple’ as psychological disturbance due to her own inability to bear children, or something more sinister unguessed at?
Travel Guide
New York
This is not the kind of New York you would ever want to wander into in real life!
The stench, dirt, poverty is evident from page one and it never lets up. But this is now 1900s New York and somewhat more ’advanced’ than that in The Alienist
The traffic gasoline-powered automobiles and trucks these days, not just clattering old nags dragging carriages and carts …”
The city comes to life in all it;s glory. The flatiron still has its ‘solitary, peculiar silhouette and her fussy stone face” tillords it over the city as do the bridges which cut through the fog and dirt of the river.
This is a city where violence is common and where female violence is explored with some level of detail in this story. There is a boy’s house of refuge on Randalls Island, a miserable place, and Grammercy Park which alongside the gaming houses of the Tenderloin area come to gritty, grey life.
And still, all around was the squalor and the densely populated, disease-ridden, crime-infested slum also known as the Five Points.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Angel of Darkness (The Alienist 2)
Destination : New York City Author/Guide: Caleb Carr Departure Time: 1896
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
