Caleb Carr's shrewd and amiable entertainment The Alienist (Random House; 496 pages; $22) is a good psychological thriller, but what makes it exceptional is that it is also a remarkable time-machine voyage. Carr sets us down in New York City -- yes, there's the American Museum of Natural History right where it belongs, at 79th and Central Park West -- but the date is 1896, a year poised more delicately than most between past and future. Horses still pull cabs, but telephones are fairly common. New York is still a rowdy port city, but finance has replaced shipping as the principal...
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