Caleb Carr, a military historian and author whose experience of childhood abuse drove him to explore the roots of violence — most famously in his 1994 best seller, “The Alienist,” a period thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in 19th-century Manhattan — died on Thursday at his home in Cherry Plains, N.Y.
The cause was cancer, his brother Ethan Carr said.
Mr. Carr had first pitched the book as nonfiction; it wasn’t, but it read that way because of the exhaustive research he did into the period.
And he peopled his novel with historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt, who was New York’s reforming police commissioner before his years in the White House.
Up to that point, Mr. Carr had been writing, with modest success, on military matters.
Persons:
Caleb Carr, —, Ethan Carr, Carr, Theodore Roosevelt, Jacob Riis, James Chace
Organizations:
Quarterly
Locations:
”, Cherry Plains, N.Y, American, Chinese