“In 1909, Sigmund Freud, accompanied by his then-disciple Carl Jung, made his one and only visit to the United States … Despite the great success of his visit, Freud always spoke, in later years, as if some trauma had befallen him in the United States.  He called Americans ’savages.’  He blamed America for physical ailments that afflicted him long before 1909.  Freud’s biographers have puzzled over this mystery, speculating about whether some unknown event might have happened in America that could make sense of his otherwise inexplicable reaction.” — Introductory note to The Interpretation of Murder.

In his soon-to-be released (and first) novel, Jed Rubenfeld uses this biographical anomaly as the foundation upon which he builds a immensely entertaining potboiler of a murder mystery.  Rubenfeld, a Yale law professor and Constitutional law expert, fully exploits the colorful historical setting (New York City just after the turn of the century) and the larger-than-life characters that inhabited the period while creating a few memorable fictional ones along the way. 

The story advances along two fronts.  On one front it is the story of Dr. Stratham Younger, a blue-blooded Freudian psychotherapist who, while escorting Freud on his visit to America, gets sucked into a murder investigation when he becomes the therapist for a young woman who’s been attacked, strangled and whipped by an unknown assailant.  Dr. Younger’s urbane and introspective (he spends his time pondering philosophical and psychological questions like the Freudian critique of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy) and his sections of the book are narrated in an elevated first-person.  The other front is led by a young and incorruptible New York City police detective, Jimmy Littlemore.  Detective Littlemore is a wonderful foil to Younger; he keeps the action moving at a  fast pace and does the dirty work to keep the story grounded.  Where Younger obsesses about Shakespeare, Littlemore takes his cues from H.G. Wells.   Here, the tone is a straight-forward Raymond Chandler-esque, third-person account of the sort we’re used to reading in a detective novel.  It’s an effective technique, although the sudden shifts from first to third person are a bit jarring, particularly once Younger and Littlemore’s stories become more and more intertwined.

Although the murder mystery at the heart of the novel is entirely made up and satisfyingly sensational, Rubenfeld manages to weave into the story enough interesting historical, psychological and literary topics to elevate the story into something more than a frantic page-turner.  The descriptions of New York City in the early modern era, with details about architecture, politics and society, are fascinating and give the story texture rather than distract.  Rubenfeld even incorporates the history into the story.  Likewise, Freud and his psychotherapy colleagues—particularly Jung—are not just background, but are significant characters.  The major plot even borrows from one of Freud’s most famous case studies. 

The review copy I read was still a little rough, with more than a few typos that I’m sure will be edited out by the final printing.  In all, it was one of the most entertaining mysteries I’ve read in a while.  Although I hesitate to compare it to Dan Brown (the writing is much, much better and the situations much more plausible), I can see how it could appeal to the same audience, the sort of people who want their complex novels peppered with History Channel-type edu-tainment. My only complaint was that the ending was the somewhat inelegant: the book relies on too many pages of standing-around-chatting exposition to wrap up each of its storylines and explain its mysteries, prolonging the book about forty or fifty pages beyond its most climactic revelations.  But that’s a minor criticism and not one that would prevent me from enthusiastically recommending the book.

The Interpretation of Murder is scheduled for a September release by publisher Henry Holt.