In that pyramid of the beat generation, from which a Lucien Carr little gifted for writing seemed to lead the literary destinies of the Kerouac o William S. Burroughs among others, he could never imagine that he would be his own son, Caleb Carr, who finally treasured that literary capacity that he was always denied.
En Caleb Carr we met a novel writer, but also to the editor of non-fiction books on the military or articles of all kinds. And there is no doubt that he is proficient in putting black on white everything he wants to tell about his particular creative universe or about what he likes to delve into issues of social or political reality.
In its most valued and recognized facet, which is none other than its novelistic occupation, its readers value that universe with a nineteenth-century point readjusted towards the warlike, towards an epic of survival. Fantasies and great plots not exempt from rigorous documentation for the historical moment in which they are presented.
As I say, a writer with haunting streaks of Edgar Allan Poe compensated at other times with more developed frames to the point of Conan Doyle. A fantastic combination with his ups and downs, but always a pleasant insight into approaches from a not-so-distant past in which, through Caleb's prism, anything can happen.
Top 3 Recommended Books by Caleb Carr
The alienist
The twentieth century looms as a near horizon in New York. A horizon of orange lights as a bed for a sun that gives way to the darkness of a city that passes to submit to its new rules. The nocturnal birds of the New York of 1896 go on to draw a scene typical of Carr's imagination, with gloomy inspirations from the magical.
But at its heart The Alienist is a detective story full of gratifying embellishments between the mystical and the gothic. The alienist is none other than Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist with that still esoteric label who studies the human mind and its possible twists and turns towards pathology and crime.
A ruthless murderer has cruelly killed a victim on the Williamsburg Bridge and both Laszlo and John Schuyler Moore, a seasoned journalist sometimes required by the police for his exhaustive knowledge of the city's underworld, tackle the task of elucidating what it is. has passed.
The angel of darkness
The Kreizler series finds continuity in this work in which we delve into that dark New York. It is always worth delving into that dark past imagined by Carr for the city that is already the beacon of the Western world in every area.
The truth is that NY is the city par excellence for stories, novels and films. Its cosmopolitan condition, its nature composition of migrants from here and there since ancient times make it an exquisite miscellany in which Caleb Carr moves like a fish in water to present stories always possible in the most unfathomable assumptions.
Everything can be in NYC and Laszlo Kreiler becomes a necessary real-life interpreter for a police officer who barely deals with varied crime cases.
When the daughter of the Spanish consul is kidnapped, the police begin to beat their battles until they finally surrender to this Sherlock Holmes of the human psyche, faced with a case that points to the risk of imminent crime.
A story that also provides a review of the diplomatic conflict between the United States and a Spain that is reluctant to abandon its last nerve centers of influence.
The case of the Italian secretary
Carr's devotion to Conan Doyle is evident in this novel, which is a continuation of the investigations of the star character Sherlock Holmes. An act of literary resurrection as daring as it was finally well achieved.
The new case leads to Sherlock Holmes and Watson focusing their investigative tasks on a past event of great relevance. A challenge for Sherlock Holmes who must go back to the 16th century through a historical investigation to determine who killed David Rizzio, executor of great secrets of the Queen of Scotland and in whose hands he collected transcendental information that could have changed the history of Great Britain. .
Of course, the investigation must be immersed in a fantastic touch that is capable of linking remote events with the reality of a Sherlock Holmes as predisposed as ever to accept the supernatural as part of the matter to be investigated and clarified.
