A Spanish diplomat's wife has her baby snatched in 1890s New York and the case is given to psychiatrist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and his young assistant who narrates the tale. The probe leads them to a nurse turned serial killer of children, including her own.

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.????????The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt,...