The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "THERE IS NO mystery to happiness..." (more)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It has been said that a mystery novel is "about something" and a literary tale is not. The Interpretation of Murder has legitimate claims to both genres. It is most definitely about something, and also replete with allusions to and explications of Shakespeare, to the very beginnings of psychology, to the infighting between psychoanalytic giants--all written in a style that an author with literary aspirations might well envy.

In 1909, Drs. Freud and Jung visit Manhattan. They no sooner arrive when a young socialite is murdered, followed by another attempted murder, bearing the same characteristics. In the second case, the victim lives. She has lost her voice and cannot remember anything. The young doctor, Stratham Younger, who has invited Freud to speak at his University, soon involves Dr. Freud in the case. Freud, saying that Nora's case will require a time committment that he does not have, turns her over to Younger. The rudiments of Nora's case are based on Freud's famous Dora, complete with sexual perversions, convoluted twists and turns and downright lies.

That is just one of the myriad plot lines in the novel, all of which are intricate, interesting and plausible. All it takes for all of the incidents to be true is a great deal of bad will--and it is abundant here! There are politicians who are less than statesmen, city employees at work for themselves and not the city, doctors who will do anything to undermine Freud's theories, thereby saving the neurotics for themselves, and opportunists at every level of society, seeking psychological or material advantage. Carl Jung is portrayed by turns as secretive, mysterious, odd, and just plain nuts, while Freud remains a gentleman whose worst problem is his bladder.

Not the least interesting aspect of the book is all the turn-of-the-century New York lore: bridge building, great mansions, the Astor versus Vanderbilt dustup, immigrant involvement, fabulous entertaining, auto versus carriage. Despite the tangle of tales, debut author Jed Rubenfeld finishes it with writerly dexterity--and the reader is sorry to see it all end. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Turning a psychological thriller with a cast that includes Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and several important American politicians and millionaires from a rich textual experience to a gripping and exciting audio event requires a reader with many skills. Heyborne knows how to use just his voice to bring a variety of nationalities and social classes to life. He can catch the inherent smartness of a working-class detective in a phrase, and can as quickly mark a pioneering medical examiner as a dangerous crank. But where he really succeeds is in the three very different psychoanalysts who move Rubenfeld's story of murder and psychosis down its distinctive road. Heyborne's Freud is an all-too-human man of obvious charm and originality; Freud's disciple Jung is cold, calculating and obviously envious; and fictional narrator Dr. Stratham Younger is a bright and admiring early Freudian who is also somewhat skeptical about some of the Viennese master's theories. This goes a long way in easing listeners through some of Rubenfeld's longer monologues about life and architecture in New York in 1909—passages that readers had the option of skimming without missing any vital nuances.
Copyright© American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Picador (May 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312427050
• ISBN-13: 978-0312427054
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #414,409 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Succeeds as a Historical Novel, but not as a Thriller, September 12, 2006

By	Thriller Lover (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel (Hardcover)

THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER is probably the most hyped thriller of the year. This debut novel, which takes place in New York during the summer of 1909, promises an exciting murder mystery where the legendary Dr. Sigmund Freud tries to track down a killer of a young society woman.

As a thriller, I must admit this novel really disappointed me. Freud is not a central character in this book at all. Instead, this novel features a large number of characters, and author Jed Rubenfeld keeps shifting the focus from one character to another. As a result, none of the characters are fully developed and many of them end up as slightly cartoonish.

In particular, I was heavily displeased with how Dr. Carl Jung was portrayed in this novel. Rubenfeld portrays Jung as a thoroughly unlikable person, a borderline psychopath with virtually no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Freud, by contrast, is portrayed as a virtual saint. Although I am not an expert on either man, I seriously doubt that these are fair and accurate portrayals of what these men were really like.

In the end, the large number of one-dimensional characters made this novel a somewhat sterile experience. I did not find this book the least bit emotionally engaging, which is a fatal problem for any thriller. In order to be thrilled by a book, I have to care for the people inside it. That did not happen with THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER.

I was also highly disappointed by the ending of this novel, when Rubenfeld reveals who the murderer is, and how the crime was committed. This is, quite simply, one of the most convoluted and unbelievable explanations for a crime that I have ever read. This book has an abnormally large number of plot twists at the end, but none of them were the least bit credible.

This book is further burdened by numerous subplots that do little to advance the story, most notably a rather dull subplot invovling a conspiracy to block Freud's lectures at Clark University. This subplot, which Rubenfeld openly admits has no basis in historical fact, has a remarkably anti-climactic ending. I wish this subplot had been eliminated, since it only serves to distract the reader from the much more interesting murder mystery.

So why read this book? First of all, Rubenfeld does an excellent job of recreating Manhattan in the year 1909. He obviously did a great deal of research for this book, and it shows on almost every page. I enjoy historical novels, and I found the level of historical detail in this book to be very impressive. I really felt like I transported to another place, and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Second, this novel also serves as a very interesting introduction to the theories of Sigmund Freud. I have never studied psychology in depth. Despite this fact, I thought Rubenfeld did a good job making Freud's ideas understandable, largely through a series of dialogues between Freud and other characters. This novel made me more interested in Freud and his psychology, which I'm sure was Rubenfeld's intention.

In short, this book largely flops as a thriller. But I thought it was a decent historical novel, with a lot of material to stimulate the intellect. Rubenfeld deserves credit for writing something this ambitious, although he does not completely succeed. I therefore give this novel a mild recommendation.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing as a Mystery, January 22, 2007

By	Big Mac - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel (Hardcover)

Book Review:
The Interpretation of Murder
by Jeb Rubenfeld

The Interpretation of Murder was our book club's reading choice for January. We'd taken a couple of months off for the holidays, and several of us had put this book on our Christmas wish lists! Which made it the perfect book for January.

The set-up of the story is very intriguing indeed. This is a historic murder mystery based on true events. Sigmund Freud visited the United States only once and never returned. He had apparently taken quite a dislike to America while he was here, and when he returned to Europe he referred to Americans as "savages." In The Interpretation of Murder, the author creates a story to explain Freud's perceptions.

In a nutshell, it's New York City, c. 1909, and a beautiful out-of-towner has been murdered in an upscale apartment building called the Balmoral (based on a famous NYC building called the Ansonia). The murder coincides with Freud's first trip to America to deliver a lecture at Clark College. Dr. Stratham Younger, a burgeoning Freudian, is called in to psychoanalyze the murderer's second victim, who managed to escape.

It is a very intriguing set-up, and one that piqued all of our interest. But the book is not an unqualified success.

First, the pros. The author has done an excellent job with his research. Many of the details of New York City are very well done, including details about high society at the time (the feud between the Vanderbilts and the Astors). We all enjoyed the details about the mechanical feats of engineering that allowed the Manhattan Bridge to be built. We also liked the details about Gramercy Park (one of us used to live in that neighborhood).

But now the cons. While some of us thought the book moved along at a nice clip, most of us felt it was plodding, with too many things going on. The author is given to lengthy explanations of things like Shakespearean drama and the inner workings of Freudian theory, which lead to a sort of textbook feel. The plot is pretty convoluted, with a bunch of red herrings and subplots that muddy the waters, including one to discredit Freud before he even gets to speak at the university. Several of us had to read the resolution of the mystery several times to "get" it, and two of us gave up on trying to figure it all out.

There are some other disappointments, too. Most of us had been under the impression that Freud himself would be actively investigating the mystery--that's not the case. He's more of an advisor to Dr. Stratham Younger, who isn't very interesting as a narrator. The narration keeps switching back and forth between first person and third, which can work (some of us very much like books with multiple viewpoints) but in this case, it seemed like a mishmash. The portrait of Carl Jung (who accompanied Freud on his trip to the U.S.) seemed really unfair. None of us knew a tremendous amount about Jung, but the portrait of him in the book seems negative in the extreme (though the author says in his afterword that his fictional recreations of Freud and Jung are based on extensive research, which we didn't doubt).

The characters are sort of lifeless, too--no real flesh and blood there, not even the narrator. But the biggest problem we thought was the way the book reads. Freudian psychology has receded quite a bit...it's no longer what's going on in the field of psychology today, which is becoming increasingly focused on the brain and biochemistry. The Interpretation of Murder makes it seem as if Freudian psychology has been the salvation of the field, but we know that it really hasn't been (even though its influence of course cannot be denied). Now we may be wrong about this (none of us are psychologists or trained in that area) but even a casual reading of the popular press tells the common reader that it's all about biopsychology these days, not the Oedipus Complex. So the book feels like much ado about nothing...almost like a historical footnote that is out of touch.

Overall, I can't say that we disliked or hated the book, but many were disappointed in it and felt it did not live up to the hype. We took away from it a sense that the author really does love NYC and did a great job on the research. But as a mystery it leaves a lot to be desired, and in terms of suspense--it's almost nonexistent. Several of us finished it out of a sense of obligation, not because we wanted to. All told, not one of our favorite books, but to be fair, we are just a small group of people and others may love it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rubenfeld off to a great start!, September 26, 2006

By	Susan Tunis (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel (Hardcover)

I don't especially consider myself a fan of historical fiction. But every now and then I stumble upon a novel that's purely entertaining. The Interpretation of Murder is one such novel, and I have to say that the depiction of New York in 1909 was my favorite part of the book. The city itself is like a character!

It's clear that debut novelist Rubenfeld did his research. Not just about the city, but also about his famous characters. The novel is set during the one and only visit of Sigmund Freud to America. Apparently, for the rest of his life Freud referred to Americans as "savages" and spoke disparagingly of the US. It's a true historical mystery, because no one knows what may have happened while Freud was here that so soured the man on this country and its people.

In the mystery of this book, Freud visits America with his desciple Carl Jung and gets involved with a murder. The psychologists--along with a fictional counterpart, Dr. Stratham Younger--are asked to consult on the case. Amazingly, Rubenfeld has stolen great chunks of the character's dialog from their real life writing and correspondence, lending a verisimilitude to their psychobabble. While the doctors are analyzing everyone they encounter, the case is being solved by Dr. Younger and wet-behind-the-ears Detective Littlemore.

Others have gone into the plot in more detail, and as convoluted as the story is, there doesn't seem to be much point in me doing it again. And that may be the novel's biggest flaw. The many, many twists and reversals in this psychological who-done-it keep you turning the pages at a lightning pace, but the final denouement takes nearly 50 pages to explain what really happened! That's a lot of 'splaining! It's a very convoluted story and in the end may stretch your credulity.

Be that as it may, this novel is well worth reading. I felt like a time machine had taken me back to the NY of 1909. It was just wonderful and fascinating--and this again from a non-history buff. Plus, Detective Littlemore is one of my favorite characters I've encountered in quite some time. I would LOVE to see him again! And I even feel I learned something, quite painlessly, about the psychological theories of Jung and Freud. I really hope Rubenfeld, a professor of law, returns to fiction again.