Two "Stories in One Book
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"Interpretation of Murder" is two stories in one. It is firstly a detective story set in New York. While New York at the turn of the century is lavishly described, the characters are one-dimensional - it's hard to care about them. The murderer is identified as the chief suspect quite early in the proceedings, meaning there is no element of surprise or suspense.
The second story looks at psycho-analysis and the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This is obviously based on extensive research and is more interesting than the detective story.
The two narratives don't necessarily complement each other. Freud is at best a detached commentator on the events in the detective story.
I can't see any reason to buy this book. There are much more gripping detective stories and although the description of psycho-analysis in the book is interesting, you could again do better with a standard biography of Freud of Jung.
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Good story, poorly told
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I cannot fault the originality of the storyline but the prose is in turns ponderous, mechanical and amateurish. It feels like the author is suffering from multiple personality disorder as he writes the story. I was almost ready to abandon the book two-thirds through and find something better to do with my time but I perservered until the end. Characterisation is too weak, the plot too labarynthine and the outcome requires too much explanation to hang all the events together. Try 'The Alienist' by Caleb Carr for a much better read in a similar vein.
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Very clever but no soul
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This is not a bad book but came across as too calculating. I felt it must have had many minor rewrites to maintain the murder mystery in parallel with the clever psychology and detailed facts. Consequently I lost interest in these related threads and just wanted to get to the end of the mystery (which is far fetched and ultimately a disappointing rush). Sorry but...
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Ingenious, well-written, characterful crime fiction...
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This really is a great book. Take no notice of the reviews that claim it is badly written. On the contrary, the writing is taut, carefully constructed, lucid, fast moving with profound and insightful dialogue. The characterisation is excellent. The book is populated by wonderful characters - the fiendishly evil, manipulative, duplicitous, ingenius, psychotic, corrupt, insane, perverted and then occasionally honest, true-hearted and even almost innocent. The context is extremely well researched, it brings to life a New York in the early part of twentieth century as Freud and Jung embark in 1909. The city is buzzing. You can almost smell the docks, the motor cars, mellee of migrant conversations, horse drawn carriages, a city in transformation, everything under construction, a time of infinite opportunity and irreversible social change. The old world social order is giving way to a monied meritocracy, but will morality survive in this new world order?
The book is very clever, extremely well conceived. The murder has a fiendish twist. The new science of psychoanalysis plays a key role in the interpretation of events as the psychologist Dr Younger and the police detective Littlemore combine their disciplines to uncover and expose an evil matrix of greed, violence and perversion.
If you like a good novel with powerful dialogue and deep characterisation that doubles up as an historical crime thriller you'll enjoy this one.
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Story line good - now all we need is a good writer
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A great murder mystery but the lack of characterisation meant that it was difficult for me (and a number of the other reviewers evidently) to remember who was who. As you can imagine, this had a rather negative effect on how enjoyable the reading experience was for me.
I read to the end and then re-read some of the beginning which became a lot clearer and easier to understand when I knew the ending!
This is not a very good book but Jed Rubenfeld has potential. His book is well-researched and the story is good. There's enough extraneous material (Hamlet, psychoanalysis, Freudian theory) to pad out the book and make it an interesting read. However, I'd have preferred less Freud and Hamlet and more introductions to characters, their backgrounds and their thoughts and motivation.
Writing a good book is not just a question of having a good story - you have to tell the story too. Mr Rubenfeld needs a few creative writing classes or a ghost writer. Whichever he chooses, he probably has a good future.
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