The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

I am a huge murder mystery buff. I love mysteries, highbrow mysteries by Grand Dames like Agatha Christie or Anne Perry, silly serial mysteries like The Jane Austen series by Stephanie Barron, or even, sometimes, begrudgingly the whole time, mystery thrillers like James Patterson or Dean Koontz. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld belongs in the first category. While I am sure he would rather not be called a “Grand Dame,” Rubenfled’s book is not just a mystery; it is literature.

Rubenfeld bases his book on Sigmund Freud’s first and only visit to America in 1909 and his comment that Americans were “savages." Despite his success while in America, he always talked of his visit as being an unhappy or traumatic one. From this kernel of an idea, Rubenfeld builds the story of a murder and the attempted murder of two socialites. While on their tour of New York, Freud and his apprentice Jung are called in to help diagnose why the young girl who escaped (but heavily beaten while being tied up in a very S&M fashion) is suddenly unable to talk. Our main character, Stratham Younger, is a disciple of Freud and is called in to help diagnose Nora, the fortunate (or unfortunate as her parents believe) girl. The police want to know what happened, and when Nora recovers her voice, Younger must put it all together to help catch the man who attacked Nora. He becomes his own detective, digging deeply into the high society relationships of Nora and her family to discover a twisted tale of sexual perversion, family relationships, and of course, blue-blooded intrigue.

While there are several subplots that do distract a bit from the meat of the story, I found them to be interesting and unexpected commentary on the New York or New England area of the US in the early 1900’s. The young society doctor is earnest enough and troubled when he feels his affection for Nora could get in the way of his treatment of her. Nora is a deeply convoluted and troubled girl who is wrapped up so much in her own lies it gets difficult to understand her motives after awhile, but when you see what is really going on in the story, you can understand why she is so confused and confusing. It is heavily mired in the interpretation of sex and sexual relationships of Freud, all of which seem very masculine to me. Of course, I have never studied that much psychology to really get into Freud, so maybe that is just my interpretation.

Overall, The Interpretation of Murder is a good first outing. It’s much better than some first novels I have read, and the mystery keeps you guessing quite a bit until the end. There are sufficient red herrings and twists and turns to keep you turning pages, and when you are finished with the book, you do feel like you picked up a bit of the flavor of what life might have been like in New York then. I have read better, but not often enough for me to lower this one to the second rung of the mystery ladder.

Rating: 4 Purrs for an engrossing and complex mystery with a bit of unexpected but a little disturbing kink.