Not that The Alienist was bad. As a conceit it may even have been inspired: a bog standard New York serial killer thriller transported back to the turn of the century, its titular hero, Laszlo Kreizler, a criminal psychologist dabbling in primitive profiling and forensics.

The Angel herself is one Libby Hatch, a wet nurse fingered by the doctor's team in the kidnapping of the baby daughter of a high-ranking Spanish diplomat. But as they probe into her country past, the more this looks to be the work of a cunning serial killer in the protection of one of the city's heaviest criminal gangs. Bringing her to book will mean fighting both the underworld and the courts.

At least this time Carr doesn't get mired in the pedantic characterisation of his last, but nor has he cracked the economy this sort of narrative so desperately needs; so much is weighed down by the wealth of his (no doubt thorough) researches. Carr is an author too in awe of his own creation and one badly in need of a more rigid editor. The sheer size of his undertaking inevitably induces fatigue, although his climax is alarmingly abrupt. The Angel of Darkness is a book that borrows heavily from Harris' Silence of The Lambs, but appears to have learnt nothing from it.