Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only, traumatic visit to America (a society of savages, he was to claim), Jed Rubenfeld's novel is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's dangerous mysteries. On a sweltering August evening in 1909 Freud disembarks from a steamship in New York City, accompanied by his protégé and rival Carl Jung. Across town, a debutante is found dangling from a chandelier, whipped, mutilated, and strangled. The next day, a second beauty—a rebellious heiress—barely escapes the killer, but is hysterical and can remember nothing. American Freudian Stratham Younger calls on his idol to analyze the spirited girl. «As The Interpretation of Murder races past ravished damsels, sinister aristocrats, architectural marvels (the building of the Manhattan Bridge), hysterical symptoms, a Hamlet-Freud nexus and downright criminal wordplay ('there are more things in heaven and earth, Herr Professor, than are dreamt in your psychology'; 'sometimes a catarrh, I’m afraid, is only a catarrh'), it cobbles together its own brand of excitement. That excitement is as palpable as it is peculiar».