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    The Interpretation of Murder
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    The Interpretation of Murder
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    The Interpretation of Murder
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    The Interpretation of Murder

    Written by Jed Rubenfeld

    Narrated by Ron Rifkin

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The Interpretation of Murder opens on a hot summer night in 1909 as Sigmund Freud arrives in New York. Among those waiting to greet him is Dr. Stratham Younger, a gifted physician who is one of Freud's most ardent American supporters. And so begins the visit that will be the great genius's first-and only-journey to America.
    The morning after Freud's arrival, in an opulent penthouse across the city, a woman is discovered murdered-whipped, mutilated, and strangled with a white silk tie. The next day, a rebellious heiress named Nora Acton barely escapes becoming the killer's second victim. Yet, suffering from hysteria, Miss Acton cannot remember the terrifying incident or her attacker. Asked to consult on the case, Dr. Younger calls on the visiting Freud to guide him through the girl's analysis.
    The Interpretation of Murder is an intricately plotted, elegantly wrought entertainment filled with delicious surprises, subtle sleights of hand, and fascinating ideas. Drawing on Freud's case histories, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the rich history of New York, this remarkable novel marks the debut of a brilliantly engaging new storyteller.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 5, 2006
    ISBN9780739333273
    Unavailable
    The Interpretation of Murder
    Author

    Jed Rubenfeld

    Currently a professor of law at Yale University, Jed Rubenfeld is one of this country's foremost experts on constitutional law. He wrote his Princeton undergraduate thesis on Sigmund Freud and studied Shakespeare at Julliard. He is the author of The Interpretation of Murder. He lives in Connecticut.

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    Reviews for The Interpretation of Murder

    3.5/5

    734 ratings53 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Loved this book!
    • 4/5
      I almost put this book down without completing it. I'm glad I persevered. It turned out to be an interesting read, mostly because of the explanations of Freud's theories. The plot has a lot of twists and turns, not all of which are plausible. Some of the plot lines and characters that I thought implausible turned out to be drawn from real events. But the plot line does move forward very nicely.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed most of the book, however, the ending was a little disappointing: a little convoluted as far as the murder mystery goes, and a little simplified as far as Freud and Jung's relationship goes. Some of the story lines never developed into anything (Jung's story line). However, the first 3/4 of the book are really enjoyable: NY architecture, history, society...
    • 4/5
      I really loved this book. Great descriptions of fledgling New York city. An unpredictable and suspensful plot. Great read!
    • 4/5
      Top class entertainment, with a lesson on psychoanalysis thrown in. Freud comes over as a fine father-figure and Jung as a prize s***, which I now have a sneaking suspicion may be the case. Plot gets a bit overcomplicated at times, but I felt that was the point. Enjoyed the speculations about Hamlet and about the oedipus complex, amusing and actually made some sense.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure how I feel about this book. On one hand it was thoroughly researched and anyone who is really interested in Freud and Jung and their beliefs would probably enjoy it more than I did. Unfortunately I was never very fascinated with either of them, so some of this book was a bit of a slog for me. But the author really brought to life the time period, and the two primary characters (Stratham Younger and Detective Littlemore) are interestingly written and worthy of respect. Rubenfeld did lose me a little at the end in his resolution of the crime. It seemed overly complicated and very difficult to follow. While this particular story didn't bowl me over, I am looking forward to reading the follow-up book.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the concept of this story. Perhaps because you don't get a lot of mysteries or psychological thrillers (if you can really call it that) that directly involve psychology, but I really can't say for sure. By all accounts though, I shouldn't have liked it. It was choppy and difficult to follow at times. There were a number of story lines that were introduced and only referenced occasionally, then disappeared for half the book before popping up again towards the very end. In fact, there was one story line that was completely unnecessary except to use as blackmail at the very end. Other than that, it really served no purpose and really didn't belong in as much detail as it was presented. It only caused confusion and could have just as easily been referenced occasionally in other sections, which it also was, without being made its own chunk of the story.

      Now, for the characters. I'm really not sure why this is considered a "Freud" series, since he plays a comparatively trivial role when put up against Younger, Littlemore and the remainder of the cast. He acts as a sounding board for Younger in his psychoanalysis of Miss Action after her alleged attack. As a character, he really doesn't do much, though his presence results in a mysterious sub-plot. Younger really is the star of the show, working with Miss Action to regain her memory, helping the police, parading around society, falling in love, debating Shakespeare and psychology (usually together). Jung is another character I could have done without. Didn't really do anything except be a jerk and make Freud seem more relevant. Detective Littlemore, on the other hand, definitely doesn't get enough credit in these pages until the very end, although it seems like an afterthought at that point. His character development was probably the best in the book, even if it was relatively simple compared to the others, but then again, he seems like a simple man, so maybe it's fitting.

      I love that Littlemore was able to stick to his guns and solve the case, although, to be honest, I had to read some of those paragraphs a few times to figure out where exactly he was going with some of it. The solution was a convoluted mess and worked with the choppiness of the novel itself but wasn't exactly reader friendly. My biggest recommendation is not to read the final few chapters if you're not mentally awake enough to do so because it will result in confusion and several re-readings.

      Overall a good book. Not sure why it really tickled my fancy like it did, but I'd definitely recommend it.
    • 4/5
      If I had only read the first half of the book, I'd have awarded it 4.5 stars. The research that Rubenfeld did to craft this book was immense and really brought early 20th-century New York to life in a fascinating way. The seamless blend of fiction and historical fact, combined with a gripping plot made the book unputdownable. However, the ending was quite ridiculous and I was bitterly disappointed.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting book.
    • 3/5
      I wanted to like this much better than I did.It is mostly written third person. But every so often it switches to 1st person in the view of Dr. Younger. I found the switch to 1st person jarring. Dr. Younger's father did not believe in showing or expressing any emotion. Dr. Younger's father had committed suicide. Still Dr. Younger admires his father's ability to always appear calm. So he is willing to talk about feelings, but not show them. Dr. Younger tries to analyze everything. Which is probably a good trait fro a psychoanalysis, but makes for a dull 1st person view. Also I was annoyed with his admiring his father for not showing any emotion. Yes his father appeared calm, but the fact that he commuted suicide show it was false.I felt like I didn't know enough about Freud and Jung to quite get what was going on between them. Jung's behavior often made no sense to me. This book didn't make me care enough about them to want to go and find out more.I found the twist annoying sometimes. Things start to look like they were adding up and then suddenly it changes. I felt like I was being jerked around. The police detective Littlemore was my favorite and the most interesting character.
    • 3/5
      This falls in the category for me of books read for entertainment. The fact that it contained as characters both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung drew me in, having studied them in school and having been drawn to Jung's work. The Jung portayed here was not the Jung I recall learning about! Not a likeable person. The edition I read contained notes by the author that explained his research and the license he took with historical facts and timelines, which is really a bonus IMHU. Detective Littlemore was endearing as the good guy policeman who wouldn't give up. The writing was fine, nothing annoyed me or excited me either way. The number of red herrings seemed to pile up a little over time, but it wasn't a big distraction. A good sort of book for in-between other books when you need a pleasant break!
    • 3/5
      This was the second book in a row that I read to have a cover blurb comparing it to Caleb Carr's The Alienist; the other was Harold Schechter's Nevermore, about Edgar Allan Poe and Davy Crockett ratiocinating together. In this instance the comparison is a little more apt, since the detection is set early in the 20th century and involves not just one but a bunch of mentalists -- in this instance psychoanalysts, among them Freud, Jung and Ferenczi, visiting the US so that Freud could deliver a series of lectures and receive an honorary degree. Foremost among these men, in terms of the novel, is the youthful, tyro US psychoanalyst Dr Stratham Younger; it is he who, with ambitious young NYPD detective James Littlemore, solves the case of a young woman found seemingly murdered by a sexual sadist in a doughty Upper West Side apartment block, with a second, similar but fortunately not lethal attack on another young woman soon after in a house adjacent to Gramercy Park. That survivor, Nora Acton, becomes Younger's primary love interest, even as he recognizes that what's going on is, at least on her part, merely transference.

      The tale's carried along often with Younger as first-person narrator, often in traditional novelistic third person, and sometimes in the form of highly entertaining third-person infodump, filling in historical and/or psychoanalytic details. In any of these three modes, the text's enormously readable and the mystery engrossing; more accurately, it's the unraveling of the mystery, with layers of understanding of the truth of it being gradually revealed, that engrosses, for the mystery itself is not what it seemed at the outset. In parallel there's an unveiling of the true depths of Nora Acton's personality, through both Younger's stumbling psychoanalytic efforts and his direct romantic interest, that's equally involving. As background we have two linked sets of politicking going on, one concerning the administration of NYC, the other being rooted in the antagonism of traditional US mentalists toward the upstart Viennese discipline with its focus on matters better swept under the carpet.

      Unfortunately, the explanation of what's really been going on comes as something of an anticlimax, since it piles implausibility upon implausibility; the fact that it has to be fleshed out to fill perhaps thirty or forty pages in an attempt to stop us throwing the book at the wall in outright disbelief is an indication of the problem. Luckily Rubenfeld's prose was still sufficiently smooth to keep me reading, but it meant that I came away from the book with a far less favourable opinion of it than I'd have thought possible an hour earlier. But it's a sign of the book's strength otherwise that I was genuinely disappointed to discover from the notes at the back that both Stratham Younger and Jimmy Littlemore were, unlike Freud, Jung and the rest (whose roles are fairly minor), entirely fictional characters; they were both that well created on the page.

      Rubenfeld has published a follow-up, The Death Instinct, and I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

    • 3/5
      1909 Sigmund Freud est à New York pour donner une série de conférences sur la psychanalyse. Au même moment, une jeune femme de la bonne société est étranglée après avoir été sauvagement torturée. Freud, fatigué, malade, en butte à l'hostilité de l'intelligentsia locale, se retrouve malgré lui impliqué dans l'enquête que mène l'inspecteur Littlemore...Des bas-fonds de Chinatown aux hôtels particuliers de Gramercy Park, ce thriller à l'intrigue impeccable nous plonge dans le New York en mutation du début des gratte-ciel.
    • 4/5
      Based on Sigmund Freud’s only trip to the U.S. (which left him calling Americans ‘savages’ amongst other choice phrases) this is a literate murder mystery set in Victorian New York high society. Someone is offing young women, but one of his victims survives. The problem is she can’t remember what happened. The good news is that Dr Freud is just off the boat from Europe and he has created something called psychoanalysis that might help the girl remember who attacked her. The real life events meld seemlessly with the fictional (though Rubenfeld separates the two in the endnotes for the curious). Meticulously researched, this is an unputdownable novel with breathing characters, a fast-paced plot and intelligent dialogue.
    • 2/5
      I found the beginning of this book quite boring -- it's well researched, I think, and the descriptions are vivid, but I just didn't get into it. I didn't get close to the characters or feel particularly excited about the plot.

      Doesn't help that I'm not terribly interested in Freud and his theories -- books where famous writers are the detectives are much more in my line.
    • 3/5
      Overall, I did enjoy this story. It reminded me of "The Alienist" and "Angel of Darkness" by Caleb Carr, which I loved. I like that turn of the century time period. I like the mystery involved. But I felt like the last 20 pages or so was just to explain everything to the reader. It didn't do the actual story justice. I actually really liked the mystery part. I found myself constantly guessing and then changing my mind.
    • 1/5
       Not one I intend to revisit. In fact one I almost didn't finish. It's a fictional murder set during Freud's visit to america. He didn't much enjoy the trip, and this book is a fictional account of some things that may have put him off a country that has since gone a bit therapy crazy.
      Elizabeth Riverford is found murdered having been whipped & strangled while being suspended from the chandelier in her apartment. The next day, another young lady, Nora Acton, is found in a similar condition, but alive. She appears to have no memory of the event and had lost the ability to speak as a result of the trauma. This brings in the psychologists. It all gets a bit convoluted, with the clues pointing to several different suspects, all of which are them out of the frame and back in again. The detective in charge of the case happens to be one of those that can't be bought (one of the very few in the city at the time, based on this report) and he finally cuts through all the red herrings to get to a solution - aided & abetted by the physcologist Freud assigns Miss Acton to. Nothing wrong with the detective element, but I can't say I found much edifying in the relationship between Freud & Jung, and the details of their various schools of thought & behaviour all got a bit heavy going. I also found the way in which the crimes were described to be almost salacious in the detail and that just left a very unpleasant taste in the mouth.
    • 4/5
      Good read. I found that the frequent changes of point of view were irritating initially, but acceptable as the pace picked up. In my opinion, the ending was a bit of a let down - I expected something more and came away with less. Nevertheless, this did not overly spoil my enjoyment of what is an otherwise fine book.
    • 3/5
      When I read the blurb for this book, I was immediately interested. I'm curious about psychology and psychoanalysis, and like so many, I love a good mystery. Just having seen "A Dangerous Method" about Freud and Jung, I decided to take this with me.I don't think anyone can deny that Jed Rubenfeld is a talented writer. He manages to write fluently while still giving a lot of information. We get to know the New York City of the beginning of the 20th century, he explains his views on Hamlet - which didn't bother me, as I found the analysis interesting - etc. I loved how Rubenfeld created all these threads, going back quite a long way back sometimes, to end up at a point that fits in the story. Rubenfeld also deserves praise for the way he manages to write quite a few characters and pay enough attention to all of them to develop them properly. Character-wise, my only complaint is that I would have liked to learn more about Clara Banwell and her life. In a book so full of detail about everyone, it surprises me that she isn't more thoroughly described. Even characters I didn't like at first, such as Detective Littlemore, grew on me. I also liked the jumping between characters.So I loved the story, the writing, and the characters. Why not give it four, or better yet, five stars, then? The answer is simple: I didn't like the ending. For me, a mystery novel is a good one if at the end you can say as a reader that had you only thought those clues through more, you could've known. I don't like it when the author holds back information, only gives this information at the end, which then explains it all. I feel that as reader, with enough thinking, you should be able to figure it out. Holding back a white rabbit is too easy.Another peeve of mine was Nora's sexual ambiguity. I would've liked it more had it been clearly stated that she loved both men and women. Right now, we perceive her as gay as she has feelings for Mrs. Banwell, but then she still wants Dr. Younger to kiss her? I also think some more exploration of homosexuality at that time would've been interesting, and what it would've meant for Nora and her future life.Nevertheless, if Rubenfeld writers another novel after The Death Instinct (of which the blurb doesn't appeal to me), I'll be sure to give it a try.
    • 2/5
      A good story told in a rather annoying manner. I don't like Freud, and I didn't get to the end.
    • 4/5
      What a rollercoaster of a book! This is a really complex crime and murder mystery, with a whole host of characters whose actions interweave in the plot. A list of characters would have been really useful - I was often confused but you just have to let it flow. Interestingly this book also covers thinking on Hamlet and the relationship between Freud and Jung, including their different thinking in their field. Oh and a love story in case you thought there weren't enough plotlines. Some of the characters appeared to have personalities that developed and became more complex as the plots moved on. The conclusion makes you want to flick back to the beginning, where you realise that you made quite a lot of unfounded assumptions as a reader!
    • 3/5
      What a slog to get through this book. I'm glad I did, but there were moments that I thought this was going to join the never finished pile. There's a lot going on with a small cast of characters and in places some of the concepts are hard to follow. Stick with it, everything comes to a satisfying conclusion in the end.
    • 3/5
      A complex fact-based thriller made confusing by the mixture of third and first person narrative. oldstick.
    • 4/5
      A murder mystery set in New York in 1909, during Sigmund Freud's only visit to America. The mystery was interesting, as were the conspiracy against Freud and the New York politics, but I never actually felt that I knew any of the characters well enough to care what happened to them.
    • 4/5
      A compelling murder mystery that combines the psychology of Freud, musings on Shakespeare's Hamlet, and descriptions of New York at the beginning of the 20th Century. Part of a group entertaining Freud during his first and only visit to America, a young doctor is asked to apply this burgeoning practice of psycho-analysis on a young woman suffering from amnesia who is believed to have been attacked by the murderer of another woman. Not everyone is convinced this new type of therapy is sound medicine as evidenced by an inner plot line that reveals another set of men trying to undermine Freud's work. Consisting of believable, well fleshed out characters, as well as an adequate but not mind-numbing amount of twist and turns, The Interpretation of Murder is a pleasant and enjoyable read. A few times I was a little perturbed to begin a new chapter hoping for the action of the previous one to be continued only to be met with one of Rubenfeld's digressive depictions of some part of New York society or architecture. However, they were deftly kept short, informative, and interwove themselves well within the story so I usually became unperturbed very quickly. Overall, would recommend this book to anyone looking for a murder mystery that contains a little depth of inner reflections as well.
    • 3/5
      This story was good, but not great! There were some good twists and it was, in the main, entertaining. BUT I felt there were too many “red herrings” and the book overlong because of it. The characters were well developed, if a little odd.
    • 4/5
      A well written and very different book. Partly a whodunnit, partly a fictional look at Freud's physcoanalysis. I particularly liked the evocative scenes of early 1900s New York
    • 2/5
      A little far-fetched, but interesting period piece regarding NYC.
    • 4/5
      My imagination was completely captured by the idea of a story that involved Freud in a murder mystery, and I could not leave it on the shelf. I can no longer remember when I purchased it, but I've been looking forward to reading it for quite a while. And for the most part it delivers. Towards the end it becomes a more typical "whodunnit" with the pedictable twists and turns, but even that is fun. But I love the gentle, fascinating pace at which the characters are drawn and the scene built. And I love the exploration of Hamlet and its relationship to psychoanalytic thinking.It was lovely to simply read a good story that I could enjoy reading just for the sake of it, but which also excited my mind, without any conscious effort on my part. And the rich detailing of historical characters and settings reminded me of my favourite aspects of the Time wars series. To make it absolutely perfect I would make the ending less typical of a murder mystery, but it's great just as it is.
    • 4/5
      Interesting take on Freud and friends. Nice twist at the end. Having some academic psychology background, I enjoyed the historical psychology lessons/discussions. Now, Jed Rubenfeld... Do one on Adler! :-)