Headline Review editor Mary-Anne Harrington on the ultimate New York story.

I had only once been to New York when I first read Jed Rubenfeld’s stunning debut, The Interpretation of Murder (paperback March 2007), but I was captivated by his vision of the city. Jed’s novel takes its inspiration from Sigmund Freud’s first visit to the United States in 1909, around which he has imagined a fiendishly complex murder investigation. In the book, Freud becomes involved in the hunt for a sadistic killer who is attacking wealthy heiresses. The case takes us into some of the more fascinating corners of the psyche – and of New York itself.

In 1909 Manhattan was in the grip of skyscraper fever, as developers raced to erect taller and more extravagant buildings. One of the most striking early scenes in the book takes place on the top floor of the Balmoral, a Broadway apartment block where visitors are greeted by a marble fountain in the lobby, complete with cavorting seals. In another dramatic moment the decidedly brutal owner of the building, George Banwell, decides to ‘break’ a recalcitrant horse by having it harnessed to a crane and lifted dizzyingly high in the air.

Jed Rubenfeld’s New York is a city of sudden change and dramatic contrasts. The book is studded with glittering high society entertainments, but also with downtown labour strikes, brothels, asylums, and sinister goings-on in Chinatown. For me The Interpretation of Murder will always be the book that really brought the map of Manhattan alive, and if you’ve never even been to New York, I guarantee you will fall under its spell when you read this novel.

 
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