Killing Time: Summary and book reviews of Killing Time by Caleb Carr, plus links to an excerpt from Killing Time and a biography of Caleb Carr.

Meet Dr. Gideon Wolfe, expert criminologist of the new millennium. A professor at New York's John Jay University in the year 2023, he lives in an era that has seen plague, a global economic crash, and the 2018 assassination of President Emily Forrester. In this turbulent new world order, Wolfe's life and everything he knows are turned upside down when the widow of a murdered special-effects wizard enters his office. The widow hands him a silver disc from her husband's safety deposit box, hoping that Wolfe's expertise in history and criminology will compel him to track down her husband's killers. The disc contains footage of President Forrester's assassination, the same video that has been broadcast countless times on TV and over the internet-with one crucial, shocking difference: This version shows that before the video was released, it was altered with sinister special effects. This explosive discovery will lead Gideon Wolfe on an electrifying journey from a criminal underworld of New York to the jungles of Africa and on a quest to find the truth in an age when all information can be manipulated. With this novel, Carr has boldly established a new genre - future history - combining the best elements of mystery and thrillers with unique historical insight. Breathtakingly suspenseful, Killing Time unfolds as the work of a master novelist.

Media Reviews

George Magazine Caleb Carr's mindblowing Killing Time has ruined the future for me. Now I'm going to spend the next 25 years waiting for the world to turn out exactly the way Carr eloquently imagines it in this twisted, hilarious, touching yarn that involves so many mysterious threads that I'm reading it again. Killing Time is an intimate family drama told against a global backdrop, from a born storyteller who's invented a new way to write.   George Magazine Caleb Carr's mindblowing Killing Time has ruined the future for me. Now I'm going to spend the next 25 years waiting for the world to turn out exactly the way Carr eloquently imagines it in this twisted, hilarious, touching yarn that involves so many mysterious threads that I'm reading it again. Killing Time is an intimate family drama told against a global backdrop, from a born storyteller who's invented a new way to write.   Publisher's Weekly This book is as much didactic essay as novel, filled with preachy talk. Characters are broad but memorable, and there's some brisk action, but the suspense relies too much on forebodings and cliffhangers--no doubt because the text originally appeared as a serial in Time magazine.   Kirkus Reviews Carr whizzes quickly through this entertaining nonsense in a hit-or-miss manner that's perhaps a little too compressed, especially at the rather hurried close, which (just barely) manages to suggest that Malcolm—far and away the most potentially interesting of the book's paper-thin characters—had actually succeeded in his quest to conquer time. Fun, but awfully sketchy. Carr seems more at home in the past than in the future.   Publisher's Weekly This book is as much didactic essay as novel, filled with preachy talk. Characters are broad but memorable, and there's some brisk action, but the suspense relies too much on forebodings and cliffhangers--no doubt because the text originally appeared as a serial in Time magazine.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by CWWJ
Read Only if You Have Time to Kill
I am a Caleb Carr fan. His turn-of-the-century New York thrillers "The Alienist" and "Dark Angel" are marvelously inventive, fast-paced and suspenseful, and populated with fascinating fictional characters interacting with real historic figures in...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Jay
Lousy book
I had a hard time following the logic used in the book..It is a rant against capitalism (and what he calls communo-capitalism). His doomsday scenarios were all blamed on conumerism and capitalism which made no sense at all. The book was very...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Maria DiDanieli
A comment on 'Killing Time'
I love Caleb Carr's ability to combine historical fact with compelling stories while offering insight to our times, our nature and our role in the world's chronology. I feel he does this in 'Killing Time' while also cleaning up his tendancy to...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Nev Smith
This book is bad on so many levels, I find it difficult to know where to begin. It reads as an attempt to write science fiction by someone who never reads it, and is regrettably edited and reviewed by many of the same people. The perils of reliance...   Read More

Rated of 5 by jd
Picked the book up at a used book sale . . . glad I didn't pay full price! The book is simplistic and at times the chonology is laughable. I really wonder if Carr wrote this book . . . it just doesn't read like any of his other works. The ideas...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Dave
This book was good

...3 More Reader Reviews

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