Rating: 
Summary: GREAT READ!
Review: GREAT BOOK! I was extremely interested in the second novel with the group of characters from The Alienist, but after reading the book, I am a little disappointed in it. I missed the cat and mouse game in The Alienist. This is an excellent courtroom drama and the historical figures are intriguing, but I found the book gloomy and unexciting. The Doctor is a broken man. He seems to be a long for the ride. He is not the same intellectual leader. Stevie, the narrator, writes twenty years after the incidents in the book, but I am not happy with the lives of the characters twenty years later. Stevie makes a great narrator, but I missed the intelligence of John. The character of Libby Hatch was simply a sociopath and killer who is boring and predictable. No clear explanations or psychological inquiries are sufficiently discussed in the book. The author did not give adequate detail into criminal pathology. Carr should have researched the book more adequately. I feel as if the book was hastily written. I hope Carr writes more historical mysteries in the future and he places energy into writing the book. I do not see the passionate, erudite, and exciting writer in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Overshot
Review: Carr had 1000 pages in him--700 for the Alienist (one of the most entertaining books I've read) and 300 for this one. I gave up when Darrow entered the scene. First, the narrator didn't work in the the way what the author wanted it to work in. Simply lacked credibility. Second, if I want to read a courtroom thriller trash, with bad Clarence Darrow garbage, I'd read Big Trouble, third, this book had that same feeling as a Murder She Wrote episode in its last season: run out of plot, simply take the show on the road.Fourth, it took on a Star Trek feel, where we could tell by page 50 who the red shirts were, doomed to die before the episode ended. God, this was plain awful, and it was made worse by the fact what the expectations from the Alienest were so high.
Rating: 
Summary: Unique and interesting, but too long and implausible
Review: This book could have used an entire TEAM of brutal editors to chop it down and hone it into an effective, gripping story. But no, somehow this overlong book made it out to the public. The storyline simply collapses under the weight of too many words, too many pages. I nearly abandoned the book after 100 pages, but I'm glad I didn't, as the story started to roll along at that point like an engine with a faulty starter that you have to crank and crank before it fires.The story is very interesting, as are the characters and their interactions with each other. Oftentimes, though, the characters are too one-dimensional and stereotypical. The attention to period details was nearly flawless, although oriented towards a cynical 1990's audience. All those winking references to famous people from the 1890's were highly entertaining. Like many of the other reviewers here, I was extremely annoyed at the narrator's irregular substitution of "what" in place of "that". See, there's dialogue writing that gives the reader a genuine sense of regional speech, like in Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," and then there's lame attempts at "genuine" dialogue that bothers and slows down the reader. "Angel" falls solidly into the latter category. The story moved along toward a fairly satisfying conclusion. There wasn't a lot of suspense involved. No, this was more of a long puzzle of a book, with a few anticipated surprises thrown in to keep you reading. Ah well. Not a bad effort, overall. You could do worse. If Carr writes another one of these novels featuring the same cast, I hope he doesn't write it from Stevie's perspective and stops pandering to his audience. Like THAT will happen.
Rating:
Summary: A charming sequel
Review: Certainly the change in point of view from Moore to Taggart might be jarring at first, but the technique works in the end. I can see why many readers found this a lacking sequel after reading The Alienist, but I read it as a departure, something experimental and simply different from its predecessor. If you're looking for a book whose author takes an identical approach to each book (even though they feature the same characters), try Sue Grafton.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Escapist Fare . . .
Review: Carr's follow-up to his highly acclaimed debut novel, "The Alienist," may not have lived up to its predecessor, but it's still an entertaining yarn rich in historical flavor. True, the plotting lacks the break-neck pace of a Patricia Cornwell novel and the story can probably be told in half the number of pages, but let us not forget that Carr is trying to paint a picture here. Uncompromising in its level of detail, "The Angel of Darkness" transports us, as in a time machine, to turn-of-the-century New York like few other books can. Is it possible for the reader to savor the same richness in detail in a mere 350 pages? I think not. Carr is to be applauded for his exhaustive research and narrative prose, not condemned for it. I, for one, hope that he continues writing such novels, and perhaps even base some of them on his true love of military history.
Rating: 
Summary: Throughly enjoyable read...
Review: What can I say... I enjoyed the first book and have enjoyed the second. If you like Sherlock Holmes read Caleb Carr. I think you'll enjoy him as much as I have. I try to read at least a book a week and encounter any number of different styles of writing. Mr. Carr is on my short list of authors that I'd enjoy having dinner with.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Awful.
Review: The reviews what criticize this book are dead on. The grammar what Carr uses is distracting from a story what was already suffering from a sorry lack of editing. 750 pages what I wish I hadn't wasted my time on. If you want to get a good book, get The Alienist, what was a far superior book. .
Rating:
Summary: Pretty terrible in execution
Review: I absolutely love the idea behind Carr's Laszlo Kreizler mysteries, and who isn't fascinated by the detailed workings of turn-of-the-century New York? They always turn out to fall far short of their intentions, however. I finally gave up on this one 3/4 of the way through: although I love the period detail, Carr's predilection for imposing 20/20 hindsight upon history gets very annoying (for example, if anybody is sampling a new alcoholic concoction new to the city, wouldn't you know that it would be a martini), and his desire to bring in actual historical personages sometimes stretches believability past the breaking point (if Dr. Kreizler had to find a sketch artist, did it have to be Cecilia Beaux?). But what was most objectionable to me in the end was the anachronistic dialogue and the melodramatic, cartoonish plot events. I love the idea of recreating a vanished world, but if you like this sort of thing, I recommend instead sticking with Charles Palliser's novels (like THE UNBURIED and THE QUINCUNX) or Anne Perry's. They can at least write well.
Rating:
Summary: Angel Doesn't Fly
Review: Mr. Carr seems to have stretched too far in trying to repeat the success of The Alienist Although there are some tense scenes, the work seems to lack a uniform thrust. Too often we are given long accounts of peripheral issues, such as ballistics or psychology, which delay the unfolding of the plot The choice of Stevie as the narrator created some problems which led to some awkward arrangements to enable Stevie to observe events that he would then recount to the reader. The numerous implausibilities give one the feeling that the novel was thrown together somewhat hastily, as if to meet a deadline. However, Carr does recreate the past well and gives us interesting characters and situations. I hope he gives us another story with the same characters, but in a story more carefully thought out.
Rating:
Summary: just beginning
Review: This is a book by Carr what I am reading now, and though I liked The Alienist there is one grammatical issue what is kind of annoying me. Any guesses?
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