Killing Time

by Caleb Carr

IT IS THE GREATEST TRUTH OF OUR AGE: INFORMATION IS NOT KNOWLEDGE

Manhattan, 2023. Vera Price's husband has been murdered, and she wants criminal psychologist Dr Gideon Wolfe to investigate. On a disk she gives Gideon is the information that almost certainly cost her husband his life. For America is still in shock after the murder of its president, and the disk suggests the wrong man has been convicted...

In the internet age, the world is drowning in information. And in a sea of unregulated and unverifiable facts, the truth is harder and harder to find. And as Gideon discovers, although there are those who want to put an end to this, their actions have the consequences of not only killing people, but of killing time itself...

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Fantasy, Time Travel, Science Fiction Fantasy

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Caleb Carr was an American novelist and military historian. The son of Lucien Carr, a former UPI editor and a key Beat generation figure, he was born in Manhattan and lived for much of his life on the Lower East Side. He attended Kenyon College and New York University, earning a B.A. in military and diplomatic history. He was a contributing editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and wrote frequently on military and political affairs.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh god this is the worst book ever. The audio version read by the author is even more of a trainwreck. The characters are one-dimensional, the plot is full of holes, and the pacing is preposterous.

This book does excel at one thing: being unintentionally funny through Carr's mindless use of cliches. However, this is only amusing for the first third, after which you just want to throw the discs out the car window and continue on your road trip in silence.

Seriously, don't read this book.

[Jeffrey Caston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm afraid I didn't care for this one. That is a bit upsetting to me, truth be told because Carr wrote one of my top ten favorite books of all time, The Alienist.

So I listened to this one as an audiobook. It was one of those books I wasn't sure I wasn't sure I read. I learned quite quickly that I had read it before. So the audiobook was a re-read.

The first half was amazing -- a 5+ star read. I listened to it and I was thinking, wow this is prophetic... It takes place in 2023 and Carr NAILED a lot of what life is like. He NAILED the idea that "information is not the same as knowledge." I was thinking his plot and ideas were so prescient. The story was exciting and engaging.

Then the halfway mark came...

Ugh. The story veered into dull, esoteric, maybe even preachy material. I could not figure out the plot or why it mattered or how it had ANYTHING to do with the first half of the book. The back half of the book was like a 2 star read -- and that is being diplomatic.

Plus, another thing... Carr narrated the book. Uh... well... Let's just say it needed an actor or an audiobook narrator. It robbed the story of energy and life. That sounds harsh and I candidly really hate saying it, but it did. I don't know what went into that decision, but it would have been better with a proper narrator reading it.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazingly awful. Got 30 pages. It reads like a parody of a cyberpunk novel except not funny. Or maybe the author read a William Gibson novel and didn't get the part about making it even believable by the stretched standards of the genre. The first ten pages feature 40 product name drops, a flying saucer, black helicopters, two assasinations, and a prison break. Really, I think I'll go lie down now.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entirely fascinating tale, published in 2000, that was almost prescient, in some ways, regarding what was then the near future. So much so, that at one point I had to look up the publishing date to determine that it hadn't been written after the Great Recession of 2007! In an age where information flows almost freely, knowledge has fallen prey to belief. Nothing can be trusted to be true, because the flow of information can be, and is indeed being, manipulated. This book explores that concept in an entertaining and, at times, chilling way. The protagonist relaying the story is in hiding in a ravaged Africa, and is explaining how he came to be in that situation. I was enthralled, until the end. At that point, logic flew out the window, making it all come together in a way that this reader found difficult, if not impossible, to swallow. I despise pat endings, and for a novel of this quality, to wind up with such an obvious hack job at the end is particularly vexing. But even so, My overall enjoyment of the book largely offsets that one, major annoyance. Suffice it to say that everything changes, except for one, very important detail, which renders the ending disastrous by its omission. Still, if you like dystopic speculative fiction, this is about as good as it gets.

[Bettie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Description: Information flows freely in 2023, but is all--or "any"--of it accurate? Criminal profiler Dr. Gideon Wolfe investigates the murder of a friend in New York City when he is suddenly caught up in the company of a beautiful woman, her ingenious brother, and a band of techno-terrorists at war with the world itself.

Do you remember that bit in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency when it turns out two brothers have been working under the one doctor's certificate? I wonder if there are two Carr brothers up to the same shenanigans because this is truly awful.

Onwards and upwards - bring on the next!

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mundus vult decipi.

The world wants to be deceived.

There it is, the main theme of the book - now, move on and go read The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness.

I probably could stop my review right there, but because of my dedication to you, my goodreads friends, I won't. So, here it is, my (mostly) complete review of Caleb Carr's Killing Time.

Now, let's be clear about one thing: "Mundus vult decipi - the world wants to be decieved." If there's one thing the author wants you to take away from this novel, it's that: "the world wants to be deceived." By the end of the novel (if you can make it that far) your head will literally be covered in welts from the number of times the author bludgeons you with his main theme of: "the world wants to be deceived."

(If you were sick of reading "Mundus vult decipi - the world wants to be decieved." in that last paragraph, then just imagine 352 pages scattered with paragraphs that are almost as bad. #notahyperbolicstatement)

Anyway, despite Carr's heavy-handedness of the novel's main theme, there really are some interesting ideas to be found here. For example, I was impressed by the author's prophetic vision of the events that helped shape the timeline of Dr. Gideon Wolfe's world - as they closely mirror our modern history: A financial crash occurred in 2007; the United States is warring in Afghanistan; and a bacterial infection has caused 4% of the world's population to turn into amygdala-chomping cannibals (OK. OK. So I made the last one up. But mark my words: Ready yourselves for the zombie apocalypse. [PSA complete. Cue "The More You Know" animation]) Seriously though, I was genuinely intrigued by the author's eerily accurate "predictions" of our modern world, and it really helped make the history of Carr's future setting - the year 2023 - feel believable. (Full disclosure: At the time of the book's initial publication, which was in 1998, I wasn't really following world affairs, so maybe his ideas aren't as forward-thinking or as astute as I'm giving him credit for.)

I also found the machinations that Malcom Tressaillian and his crew concocted and surreptitiously funneled into the world's data stream, and therefore the collective consciousness of the world's population, to be quite fascinating - and some of them, quite believable. I won't go into any details about those, but let's just say that I was interested enough in one of them to do some research of my own. Which reminds me, I feel like Carr probably spent a fair bit of time during the outset of writing this novel to research and gather data on the plausibility of the conspiracies he had his characters use in the story, and for whatever reason, I find that impressive and respectable.

Finally, let me just say that I really wanted to like this novel. Really, I did. I thoroughly enjoyed The Alienist and I thought the The Angel of Darkness was okay. But this novel, despite a rather interesting mix of elements and a bevy of thought-provoking ideas was a total dud. And it's unfortunate, because this novel could have really shined, but the author's imprecise alchemy of one-dimensional characters, not-quite-believable technology, lackluster action sequences, and the leaden weight of an overbearing main theme made it nearly impossible to enjoy.

The Verdict
Stay away from this one.

If you're still interested in reading any of Caleb Carr's books then go read The Alienist as it's actually quite good.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

No matter how much you liked The Alienist, avoid this book like the plague. This sucked more than Michael Crighton on a bad day. Seriously, one of the lamest, supposed thrillers I've ever read. If it had been 50 pages longer I probably wouldn't have finished it, but I suppose I was hoping it would improve somehow before the end. It never did.

[Miss_otis · Rating 1 out of 5]

As you can see, I really didn't like this book. The characters were one-dimensional and evoked no identification/sympathy whatsoever in me, the conspiracy was utterly incomprehensible, and oh my God, the exposition. There were huge chunks of exposition that, frankly, just bored the hell out of me while simultaneously not explaining a thing. I only kept reading it because I was at work, and didn't have another book with me. Actually, that's probably my strongest impression of what I did read - it bored the hell out of me.

[Bax · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate time travel SF and I hate mainstream authors who decide to "dabble" in SF, so it's a wonder I finished this one.

'real' authors who stoop to SF almost invariably wind up trying to pass off most hackneyed, overdone tropes as market fresh (Margaret Atwood being a prime offender), and this book is alas no exception.

Readable enough, and would certainly get higher marks from readers less familiar with SF than your truly.

[Pantea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this as Caleb Carr's other novels are among my favorites. Sadly, I was pretty disappointed in this futuristic global scare tactic. The plot started out very interesting - a vision of how the topics of today (globalization, threats to the environment, terrorism, information technology, arm's control, etc) can result in a world of chaos and corruption in the future. It was basically a conspiracy theory that became increasingly implausible. Character development was pretty poor and the ending was ridiculous.

On a positive note - a fast read... a true page-turner characteristic of the author. Also some thought-provoking commentary on the issues of today.

[Atticus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oddly, I picked this book on a whim from goodwill-Caleb Carr is one of my favorite authors-this book was written probably in 1999 published in 2000 yet the story takes place in 2023! Carr, a history and military writer, knows world politics quite well. He predicted many events which have actually happened and I think he had (has) a clear perspective/opinion of the effects of "social media" on the world. Not everything in the story has come true but it is plausible that it could..... If you like history, sci-fi, world politics and like to think while you read I think you will enjoy this book. I cannot wait to read it again in 5 years to see what more came true.

[Jonathan Budar-danoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing premise, and oddly prescient that a major plot point is the manipulation of the media and far-reaching effects of doing so.

I found the writing style a bit stilted and the characters somewhat 2-dimensional, and the ending predictable.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I give it two stars for having potential... the folks saying this is the WORST book they've ever read obviously have never tried "Princess Bride" or read fanfic. Carr at least can punctuate, capitalize, write in complete sentences and never abuses a parenthese. That having said, this book is FAR from being good. I think he should have read more in the SF genre before attempting this. My suspension of disbelief was rarely willing nor complete viable, particularly with his air/space/submarine ship. Truly how DID that thing get around without causing massive air crashes and all sorts of environmental damage?
Maybe I'm just an old cynical historian, but did you REALLy think that the nature of government would truly change all that much over time. Is it really shocking, particularly to old SF readers, that governments in the future would be as repressive and governments in the past? In all honesty, modern city governments in the Industrialized nations wield power over their citizenry that medieval tyrants would have KILLED to own.

Three things that struck me most forcefully were:

1. His lack of descriptive detail, I never managed to "forget" I was just reading a book. He writes early in the book "The results of this 'revelation' I hardly need record-"

Um yes Mr. Carr, you DO need to record them as your reading audience does NOT live in the dystopian world of your hero. We do need some details. Another 50 to one hundred pages would have fleshed out the book nicely and pulled the characters out of their two dimensional status.

2. Later in the book he talks of a breakdown in hospital procedure leading to massive strep outbreaks. Really? I mean really? Even giving that this was written in 2000 and well before the Swine Flu panic, it really makes no sense and reduced me to laughing til I dropped the book as I had been in my doctor's office the prior week and because I had a sore throat, I wasn't certain that the receptionist was even going to allow me in the building to infect other people.

3. The narrative, truly a horrible choice of writing style. By making it a narrative, I felt that Carr trampled the maxim of "show don't tell" In all honesty, the book felt like it had been written by an amateur or a teenager, it just had a very "immature" feel and style.

And I won't even address the decision to introduce time travel into the plot in the last FIFTY pages! Must we have EVERY SF cliche present?

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A frighteningly plausible glimpse at the not-too-distant future, Caleb Carr's novel "Killing Time" looks at the potential (and, in some cases, real) misuses and abuses of technology in the Information Age. Fans of Carr's earlier works "The Alienist" and "The Angel of Darkness" may be somewhat disappointed that "Killing Time" lacks his familiar Victorian-era settings, but it is no less gothic and terrifying. Carr's writing is clearly influenced by classic writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. He is definitely a talented writer who has something very profound to say in this science fiction masterpiece.

[Jason Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot put into words how much I disliked this book. After reading Carr's Alienist, I had high hopes for this novel. But for anyone who reads science fiction seriously, you will find this novel laughable. The characters are uninteresting, the plot is silly, and the ending is contrived. He needs to keep to the history and historical fiction and leave the SF to those who know what they are doing.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book very much reminded me of a modern telling of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. The Main character goes through a modern tech equivalent of the journey of Professor Pierre Aronnax aboard Nemo's Nautilus. Nice entertaining and interesting read. It like 20,000 Leagues warns against the dangers of man's actions on his planet, except this time it is the danger of the internet and information overload that threatens humanity. Recommended

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wir schreiben das Jahr 2026 und die Welt steht am Abgrund. Der Mensch hat Raubbau an der Natur getrieben und die Folgen sind allgegenwärtig. Der Regenwald existiert fast nicht mehr, die Meere sind vergiftet und tödliche Krankheiten wüten unter der Bevölkerung. Das Internet ist die wichtigste Informationsquelle, aber hier gibt es so clevere Fälschungsmethoden, dass man zwischen Wahrheit und Lüge nicht mehr unterscheiden kann. Deshalb sind Menschen wie der Kriminalpsychologe Gideon Wolfe wichtig, denn sie können zumindest teilweise hinter die schöne Fassade sehen. Als Gideon in den Besitz brisanter Informationen zur Ermordung der amerikanischen Präsidentin bekommt, spürt er mit aller Härte, wie verletzlich er ist, wenn Wahrheit und Täuschung verschwimmen.

Der Krimi aus dem Jahr 2001 wird im Klappentext als "Novel of the future" bezeichnet, aber diese Zukunft ist jetzt da und ich fand es spannend zu sehen, wie sich seine Vorstellungen mit bewahrheitet haben. Bei Manchem war er überraschend dicht an der Realität. Anderes klang wirkte immer noch wie Science Fiction. Aber gerade bei der Gruppe, mit der es Gideon zu tun bekommt, gibt es viele Parallelen zu dem, was aktuell passiert.

So hat der Krimi eigentlich alles gehabt, damit er mir gefällt. Trotzdem war das nicht der Fall. Ich mag es nicht, wenn Geschichten am Ende anfangen und dramatische Andeutungen machen, was passiert ist, damit es so weit kommen konnte. Dazu kommt, dass die Handlung für mich über weite Strecken nicht stimmig war. Es gab keinen roten Faden, dafür viele rote Schnipsel. Das, was mich am meisten gestört hat, waren die Charaktere. Sie wirkten auf mich durch die Bank unecht und konnten mich nicht überzeugen.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caleb Carr's Killing Time was written in 2000 but takes place in 2023. The story ends with a time machine. More amazing than the story itself is the fact that the book eerily makes references to a past that includes a plague and a stock market crash that occurred after 2000. Other scary events from the early part of that time period hopefully won't be as familiar- a presidential assassination and the dangers of the internet. The hero of this adventure, Dr. Gideon Wolfe is a psychiatrist who becomes involved with a group led by Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian, a brother and sister who are humanitarian adventurers. They have participated in hoaxes designed to change the shape of history. Gideon reminds us, "It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge." After a particularly harrowing adventure where one of the group dies and Moscow is destroyed, Gideon leaves the group. He suggests that Malcolm has become mentally ill. Malcolm insists Gideon is mistaken and that it is possible to change present reality by modifying the past. Malcolm intends to do this via a time machine. Gideon can't get past this irrational idea and leaves the group. He lives in an African village until the group now led by Larissa tracks him down. Malcolm has disappeared. You may not believe in time machines or the fantastic plane with stealth technology that the group employs, yet so much of this book was believable. Carr's academic area of expertise is military history, which adds to his credibility. He is usually remembered for his best seller, the Alienist, but his recent death and his memoir, My Beloved Monster Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me, have kindled interest in his other books.

[Lee Rush · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-written, but not my cup of tea.

Carr’s ability as a writer is sensational. I first was introduced to his work with “The Alienist” which was truly a masterpiece of creating a living, breathing glimpse into the human psyche in the backdrop of Victorian society. It is with that benchmark that I approached this novel.

However a cursory read posed the revelation that this was not, in fact, a landscape similar to his previous work. Rather, it was a detailed, if somewhat convoluted dystopia of the near future (set in 2024, but written in 2000) of the magnitude of post-apocalyptic proportions and intricate military and political upheavals and corruptions. A story with a psychological meets sci-fi edge to it.

A story that simply is not my favorite to consume.

However, Carr’s ability to carry a story line across, and aggressive plot development prevented me from giving up before the end. So, if you are an espionage junkie, or military thriller aficionado, I would recommend this novel.

[Hannah Balkovec · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m really upset because I love Caleb Carr’s writing. The Alienist is one of my favorite books. And at first, this story was fine. Stories set in the future sometimes do a little too much, and in the beginning, it didn’t really. The hostile takeover by a government in 2023 wasn’t really far off or unbelievable. But then it got a little ridiculous and I had to back out when the group that we’re supposed to believe is helping and stopping corruption accused Native Americans of lying about being Native Americans. Also, the writing was corny and unfunny at points.

[Laura Ruetz · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a let down. I loved The Alienist and the author's writing style. However, none this book had nothing to really hold it together. The characters to begin with.. None of them were engaging or relatable. The plot was convoluted and never fully came together. It felt fractured and hastily put together instead of being a cohesive book.

[Bonnie Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is astonishingly bad for the author of "The Alienist." I didn't swoon over Alienist but it was a good read. This reads like a pastiche spoof of formula action films that fails at being funny - it's just purely awful.

[Fanona · Rating 4 out of 5]

science fiction meets present time. there were some quotable ideas & dialogue in this I liked it more than I thought I would. even hope the technology exists & we are blessed by it soon.

[Karen Wickham · Rating 1 out of 5]

This has to be one of the worst books I've ever read. I don't like leaving books half finished, so I finished reading it, which was really tiresome. So be warned. This is Science Fiction, written in the year 2000 and set in 2023. So is near future dated, but you wouldn't know it based on some of the outlandish technology described in it. The author obviously got carried away. If you like Sci Fi, you might like this book. I don't really like Sci Fi, but will read it on occasion just for something different to read. If you're looking for something different, look elsewhere.

Where do I start to describe just how bad this book really is. Right from the start the author adopts a precis style of writing, i.e. he tries to get the content across in as few words as possible, removing all the fluff. So absolutely no time at all is spent in developing characters, or even physically describing them. No time is spent in discovering character motivations, thoughts, attitudes. The result is that all the characters are completely one dimensional, and as a reader I couldn't care less what happened to any of them.

There is the potential for some exciting action at the beginning of the book, but because of the brevity of the writing style, it's all over with before you can blink and we're on to the main thrust of what was the most preposterous, and I have to say, boring plot I've seen for a long time.

The one female character is described as beautiful and sexy and practically throws herself at the main character, as is often the case in Sci Fi books. Why is it that Sci Fi authors seem to like to live out their own wet dreams in front of their readers like this? There is no development of their relationship, and yet within what seems like a couple of days of meeting her, he professes to be in love with her, but at no time are we treated to any description of their time together to tell whether or not this is true.

The ending is trite and not really believable. It attempts to wrap things up nicely but does a very poor job.

Avoid this book at all costs.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rare novel for two reasons. One is that the theme is clearly stated from the beginning, which is that information is not knowledge. The second is that Killing Time was published in 2000. This is important because the story takes place in 2023/4, after technology allowed misinformation to spew forth so widely that it resulted in wars and global economic collapse in 2007. While there was indeed a real-life recession starting in 2008, it wasn’t nearly as severe as the fictional portrayal.

Gideon Wolfe is a psychiatrist, instructor, and criminal profiler who finds himself working with a group of brilliant fugitives who’ve been trying to show the world that most “news” simply can’t be trusted. To do so, they’ve created elaborate hoaxes that virtually rewrite history. They assumed that the truth would eventually be discovered, and that the lesson would make people think twice about buying into whatever media dump they were bombarded with. But that didn’t happen. The lies were not only believed but a particular hoax about the holocaust created an Israeli terrorist with access to a nuclear weapon.

If you look at the brouhaha and upheavals being made over fake news and misinformation today, the book is prophetic on some levels. I don’t know what readers thought of Caleb Carr’s novel when it was first published, but having just read the book, I couldn’t help comparing it to current events. There are some pretty clear warnings in this story about what could happen if governments, journalists, social media, and corporations allow the lies to spin out of control.

The book’s ending is the stuff of fantasy, and although I liked it, I imagine that other readers will think differently. Still, this is an entertaining, well written novel that I won’t forget anytime soon.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the year 2024, after innumerable financial breakdowns, military conflicts, and disease epidemics have left the world a shell of its former self, the remainder of the population relies on the Internet to obtain all their information about what is happening in the world. Dr. Gideon Wolfe, a respected professor at John Jay University, begins to discover how much misinformation is being disseminated by the Internet when he is given a disc that contains clues that reveal that a recent political assassination may not be all that the world has been led to believe. In the course of his ensuing investigation, he teams up with a crew of disenfranchised scholars, scientists, and military leaders whose personal crusade is to show the world that they are being misdirected and manipulated by the powers that be. However, their methods are rather extreme and Wolfe finds himself being progressively more entangled in the web of their "game." While the world that Carr presents to the reader is fascinating beyond anything I've read before predicting what our future might be, and would seem highly plausible had many of his "what ifs" not been shot down as a result of 9/11 (this novel was published in 2000), the story that accompanies it did not hold my interest level nearly enough and did more to discredit Carr's vision than enhance it.

[East Bay J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me preface this review by saying I loved Carr's other novels, The Alienist and The Angel Of Darkness.

Found this one at my local laundromat, recognized Caleb Carr as the author of the above mentioned books and figured this was a no brainer. The concept sounded a little out there but, having enjoyed those books so much, I thought I couldn't lose. And I didn't. Not entirely. Killing Time is well written and extremely well conceptualized, it just didn't hold my attention. While Carr does a fantastic job of questioning a million aspects of life in this day and age, weaving a complex and intricate web of cause, effect and damnation, this was not exactly a page turner for me. The fact that this was serialized in Time magazine may lend to the almost noir-esque feel (I did like the short chapters, especially with a six month old running our household), everything comes across a little too cut and dried. Too by the numbers. Which is weird because there is nothing by the numbers about what Carr has done here in terms of questioning not only the proliferation and detriment of technology, but also the folly and ultimate downfall of human weakness and ignorance.

Ultimately, I liked a lot about Killing Time but it just didn't grab and hold my attention.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Killing Time was my first introduction to Caleb Carr's work. Having heard good things about his previous works--especially the Alienist--and being a science-fiction fan, I decided to give his latest novel a try.

And I've got to admit I was wholly disappointed with Kiling Time. The novel starts off with an interesting hook and tries to build on it for the first 50 or so pages. But it completely derails throughtout by a lack of focus and the fact that the plot needlessly jumps from storyline to storyline with little regard for the characters. Indeed, outside of the first person narrator and the token female, Larissa, the rest of the characters are wholly forgettable.

Carr has some interesting ideas--and indeed some of the events that play out in this book are especially haunting in the post-Sept. 11th climate. But Carr's future is too bleak--even novels that present bleak futures like Gibson's Neuromancer offer us some hope in the basic decency of humanity and the human condition. No such luck with Killing Time. Carr does some speculation on where the world might be in a few years, but it's too bleak to be believed.

Honestly, this book is just a disappointment. If you're looking for quality science-fiction, look elsewhere.

[Suzanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I probably should have read some reviews of this book before I picked it up. Unfortunately, I bought this book several years ago, before I discovered Goodreads or Amazon reviews. And now, I’m attempting to read all those books that have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. Hence – the reason for finally reading Killing Time. I, too, was a fan of Caleb Carr’s historical murder mysteries The Alienist, and it’s sequel, The Angel of Darkness.

This book came about because the editors of Time magazine urged Carr to write a novella that took place in the near future. The premise is intriguing. With the age of the internet, the public has become brainwashed with all the false information they are being fed. A cyber-terrorist group is established to feed the public especially crazy information with the purpose of exposing themselves and the problems with internet information at the same time. Only the government steps in and prevents the truth from coming out, at the same time, hunting down these terrorist/heroes.

Unfortunately, Carr spent little time on character development, and the story was very choppy. Flat, uninteresting characters paired with flat, uninteresting stories, made for quite a dull read. 1 1/2 stars.

[Joanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Preposterous' is a great word, when you think about it, but opportunities to use it are rare. Then along comes Killing Time, and voila! Preposterous has its day in the sun!

That's the best way to describe the plot in this novel, as well as the seasickness-inducing pacing and the teenager's fanfic characters. The pacing was the first thing I noticed - we go from an almost noir "it was just another day in my humdrum office when her silhouette darkened my door" setup to "this stealth airship is home to a dangerous cabal of geniuses who control the information narratives of the modern world" in about 30 pages. How do we get there? With some contrived dialogue, a couple of info dumps that drop dates and incident names like the index of a history textbook, and a LOT of summary instead of action. This pattern continues throughout the book, where we spend enormous amounts of downtime listening to the cabal of geniuses wax philosophical (including one lecture that occurs in between someone declaring "emergency!" and everyone waddling over to their stations five minutes later) and then perilous action sequences are summarized in a page or two, their successful outcomes made into foregone conclusions. After the riotous 30 pages, in fact, the first 2/3s of the book has no true action scenes - just geniuses sitting around and talking about geniusy things.

Then there's the characters. To call them two-dimensional is an insult to drawings: the bland Gary Stu of a protagonist who everyone lauds and loves, literally Professor X from X-Men, a Frenchman who appears to know three words of French (coincidentally, just like Caleb Carr!), a gorgeous assassin and only woman on the team who falls head-over-heels for Mr. Stu, a creeptastic pervert who is best described in his own words "Ugly - with sexuality!", a battle-scarred military vet whose name is (I kid you not) Colonel Slayton, and twins. Yes, just twins - they have no personalities or, frankly, importance aside from that characteristic. Describing that cast, I almost feel like I must have hallucinated this book, because surely - surely! - such bland and ludicrous characters could never have made it into a published novel. Spotlight on Larissa, the Token Female, who must have been written by a man who has only read of the Elusive Female in ancient anthropological works; I almost rolled my eyes out of my head when one guy said to Protagonist Man that she "hardly ever falls for guys - but when she does, hoo boy!" Other than a shop teacher's handful of French words and inappropriate sexual references, you could basically do a roulette to choose which character is associated with each line of dialogue. I'm not against camp as a whole, but it just doesn't work to present characters that might be found in a B-grade shonen anime with such earnest gravitas.

But wait, there's more preposterousness to be had! (Preposterity?) The plot hinges on the fact that this genius cabal can deceive the entire world, including legions of experts in various fields, because they are "vry smrt". There is no justification for how a couple of randos can reliably produce documents and archaeological finds that fool literally everyone in the entire world, and one of the central conflicts emerges because their forgeries are so good as to be unfalsifiable. Yet the author, despite appearing to have a sound grasp of sociopolitical events, showcases his ignorance in other domains by, for example, stating that the unveiling of a conspiracy letter between the apostle Paul and some early church leaders somehow upends all of the extremely compelling evidence of the New Testament gospels; he also relies exclusively on pop psychology principles in his main character... who is a psychologist. Now, perhaps this part is due to my own ignorance, but I didn't understand why the falsified pictures of Stalin in the German concentration camp raised such an uproar. Germany and the USSR were allies before Hitler betrayed Stalin, so there's every likelihood that Stalin knew, at least in part, what Hitler was doing - to say nothing of the fact that Stalin killed six times as many people as Hitler.

Technically speaking, the writing style is overly pretentious and wordy; some of the sentences left me confused and required re-reading. There was also a clear overuse of italics, as if this book needed to look even cheesier. About halfway through, too, Mr. Carr apparently accepted a sponsorship from Clumsy Foreshadowing Inc., which means most chapters (and even some paragraphs) end with the template, "Little did we know", "Had we but known", "If I had any idea what was to come". If only Caleb Carr had known how much laughter his writing would unintentionally provoke, he would surely have taken a moment to reflect on his actions - but tragically, he didn't. Check please, Clumsy Foreshadowing Inc.!

Why has this trainwreck received 2 stars, you may ask? Well, despite the myriad weaknesses, the central premise of the book about the corrupting influence of widespread information, particularly influenced by the internet, is extremely intriguing. I do think that many of Mr. Carr's ideas on the subject are thought-provoking and worthy of being brought to the forefront of readers' minds, and in some cases he was eerily prescient about the future (aaaand completely off-base in others). The plot of the novel isn't beyond salvaging, either - not even the twist that comes at the very end, when the meaning of the title is finally revealed (I thought it was just a description of the kind of mood a reader might be in after finishing this disastrous novel). It's a shame that such insightful and entertaining ideas are buried under the wreckage of some basement-dwelling teenager's collapsed fever dream.

My favorite part of the book was when Colonel Slayton said, "It's Killing Time!" and then he killed all over the place until one (or both?) of the twins said, "Your slogan is actually, 'It's Slaying Time'... hence the name?" but then he just killed/slew one (or both).