The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, #1)

“Our past survives in our present.”

Kreizler spends so much time looking for the killer's parents. It makes you realize how much our childhood follows us. Most adults are just carrying around old wounds.

The Gilded Age setting feels so glamorous until you see the tenements. Poverty and wealth lived right on top of each other. The contrast was physically suffocating.

Sara Howard has to fight just to be in the room. She ignores the insults from every man at the police station. Her quiet resilience is the real backbone of the team.

Roosevelt was actually a working police commissioner before he was president. He wanted to clean up a city that thrived on corruption. It was a messy and lonely job.