Who is this book for? I was vaguely interested in a lot of what the book cares about: history of New York City, the beginning of criminology, a character study of men driven to crime and the men who catch them. I could be on board with all of that. But that’s not what the book is. Instead it focuses on the narrator, the guy who plays Watson to Kriezler’s Sherlock, and his many fears and insecurities. It’s not even a psychological thriller, as the characters that are supposed to be the focus spend more time obfuscating their past and true identities than they ever do revealing or analyzing them. It’s a confused book that doesn’t know what it wants to be, and that made it a rather unpleasant experience for me as a reader.