The bestselling 1994 novel The Alienist’s author, Caleb Carr died at age of 68 on Thursday at his home in Cherry Plains, New York. He died due to cancer. The news of his death was announced by his brother Ethan Carr. He was born on August 2, 1955 into a family haunted by violence and abuse into a New York City. His father named Lucien Carr was a Beat Generation journalist, he was convicted for the 1944 killing and as a sexual predator.
Caleb Carr has visualized his childhood abuse and a lifelong obsession with violence in The Alienist. This novel focuses on the attempts of a child psychiatrist or “alienist” in the vocabulary of the day which was set in the 19th century New York City. The pre-publication of this book made Scott Rudin, the Hollywood producer buy the film rights of this book for a reported half-million dollars. This project was later on joined by Paramount pictures and also some popular names such as directors Curtis Hanson and playwright David Henry Hwang.
After a decade later, TNT aired the limited series version of the novel in 2018 and a second series based on Carr’s 1997 sequel The Angel Of Darkness was released on TNT in 2020.
Carr had written seven novels in all that includes the bestselling contemporary crime novel Surrender, New York (2016), several non-fiction books and the recently-released 2024 memoir titled My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me.