The Interpretation of Murder

It is Summer 1909 in New York City, and someone is torturing and killing young women. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Stratham Younger are in the city, getting ready for Freud's lecture series at Clark University. When young heiress Nora Acton is attacked, the handsome Dr. Younger proceeds to carry out analysis to bring forth her suppressed memories. This mystery is suffused with New York atmosphere. Kirby Heyborne engages from the first with a crisp reading. He has a lovely time creating the various Germans, as well as the toughs from Tammany Hall, creating all with perfect accents and pitch. His pacing adds much to the suspense, bringing to life the streets of New York, as well as the inner workings of psychological genius. B.H.B. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

July 10, 2006
The search for a serial killer during Sigmund Freud's 1909 visit to New York City, his one trip to the U.S., propels the plot of Yale law professor Rubenfeld's ambitious debut. Freud's arrival coincides with the sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman in an upscale hotel. A similar attack on another woman results in the victim's hysterical paralysis. The efforts of Dr. Stratham Younger, a protégé of Freud's, to recover the survivor's memories of her assailant lead Younger into a morass of politics, big money and kinky sexual escapades. Freud plays a background role, but the father of psychoanalysis does get to expound his ideas, demonstrate his diagnostic acumen and don an apparent martyr's robe. Readers will learn much about Freud's relationship with his then-disciple Carl Jung, the building of the Manhattan Bridge, the early opponents to Freud's theories and the central problem posed by Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy. While not as well crafted as Caleb Carr's similarly themed The Alienist
, this well-researched and thought-provoking novel is sure to be a crowd pleaser. $500,000 marketing campaign; 15-city author tour.

It's 1909, and skyscrapers "higher than anything built by the hand of man before" are beginning to blot out the sun over Manhattan. This really happened. Sigmund Freud "distinguished, immaculately groomed" is passing through on his only visit to the United States. This also really happened. A woman is strangled with a silk tie. This, too, has doubtless happened from time to time, but here it's also where the story begins. Murder, romance, and a primer on history are all built into this clockwork plot. Actor Ron Rifkin masters the obstacle course of narration flawlessly. He's man. He's woman. He's an Austrian Jew, an American heiress, an Irish sandhog. Clever entertainment, cleverly performed. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine