Carr had 1000 pages in him--700 for the Alienist (one of the most entertaining books I've read) and 300 for this one. I gave up when Darrow entered the scene. First, the narrator didn't work in the the way what the author wanted it to work in. Simply lacked credibility. Second, if I want to read a courtroom thriller trash, with bad Clarence Darrow garbage, I'd read Big Trouble, third, this book had that same feeling as a Murder She Wrote episode in its last season: run out of plot, simply take the show on the road.Fourth, it took on a Star Trek feel, where we could tell by page 50 who the red shirts were, doomed to die before the episode ended. God, this was plain awful, and it was made worse by the fact what the expectations from the Alienest were so high.