The Interpretation of Murder: A Novel

　　一九○九年，佛洛伊德抵達紐約，展開畢生唯一的訪美之行。與此同時，一樁撲朔迷離的豪門少女連續殺人疑案，震驚了紐約市政當局。年輕的美國心理醫師楊格在佛洛伊德的指導下，運用心理分析學說，協助警探黎特摩爾破案……

　　在找尋凶手、探析懸疑案情的過程中，作者還原了二十世紀初曼哈頓的輝煌時期全景。在回顧歷史的同時，讀者得以一窺心理分析理論初現之時的景況，也可看出佛洛依德與門徒卡爾．榮格之間亦師亦敵的關係。

　　本書書名取自佛洛伊德代表作《夢的解析》（The Interpretation of Dreams），書中受害少女諾拉（Nora）的名字靈感則來自佛洛伊德的臨床案例《少女杜拉的故事》（Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria）。佛洛伊德一九○九年的訪美之行可說是歷史之謎。儘管訪問極其成功，但日後佛洛伊德每一提及，卻總似在美國受過某些精神創傷。「我的小說對這個問題提供了一個虛構的答案。」魯本菲爾德如是說。

★本書中譯本《謀殺的解析》由遠流出版。

得獎紀錄

‧2007年英國國家圖書大獎年度之書
‧英國文學小說暢銷排行榜第一名
‧2007年第一季亞馬遜全球小說銷售排行榜第三名
‧美國出版商天價預付版稅，超越《達文西密碼》
‧原著小說售出35國版權，電影版權由華納取得，籌備拍攝中

中外各界熱烈好評：

．「這部關於自我和本我的小說，情節曲折離奇，可說是一大饗宴……」──《每日新聞報》
．「充滿了無數的伏筆、英雄和惡棍之間曖昧的界線，以及明顯的故事張力……再次證明，犯罪小說和文學也可以融合為一。」──《落磯山新聞報》
．「一樁超完美懸疑謀殺案，細節精心考究，成就一部歷史類型小說的經典。」──《娛樂周刊》
．「作者運用了各種心理分析的觀點，卻能同步維持小說結構的嚴謹。他用一種慧黠、潛移默化的方式，處理許多知識層面的題材。」──《時人雜誌》

作者簡介

傑德‧魯本菲爾德（Jed Rubenfeld）

　　耶魯大學法學院教授。在華府長大的他，父親是心理醫師，母親是藝術評論家，大學在普林斯頓主修哲學，畢業論文寫的是佛洛伊德，之後在茱莉亞學院研習戲劇。接著，他進入哈佛法學院，取得博士學位，成為聲望卓著的憲法學家。

　　2006年，魯本菲爾德初試啼聲便自不凡，《謀殺的解析》全球共有三十餘種譯本，且榮膺2007年英國國家圖書大獎年度之書，也在世界各地創下暢銷佳績，其動向備受矚目。「別叫我小說家，」魯本菲爾德一再強調，卻又補上一句：「或許等我寫出第二本小說的時候，再這麼叫我吧！」

　　他的第二本小說，相信也是每一位讀過本書的讀者所引領期盼的。

　　In 1909, as a sadistic killer stalks Manhattan's wealthiest heiresses, Sigmund Freud is called in by American analyst Dr. Stratham Younger to assist him in interviewing Nora Acton, a hysterical survivor of the killer who can recall nothing about the attack. A first novel. 250,000 first printing.

Chapter One

There is no mystery to happiness.

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn—or worse, indifference—cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning—the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life—a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

For myself, I have always chosen meaning. Which, I suppose, is how I came to be waiting in the swelter and mob of Hoboken Harbor on Sunday evening, August 29, 1909, for the arrival of the Norddeutsche Lloyd steamship George Washington, bound from Bremen, carrying to our shores the one man in the world I wanted most to meet.

At 7 p.m. there was still no sign of the ship. Abraham Brill, my friend and fellow physician, was waiting at the harbor for the same reason as I. He could hardly contain himself, fidgeting and smoking incessantly. The heat was murderous, the air thick with the reek of fish. An unnatural fog rose from the water, as if the sea were steaming. Horns sounded heavily out in the deeper water, their sources invisible. Even the keening gulls could be only heard, not seen. A ridiculous premonition came to me that the George Washington had run aground in the fog, her twenty-five hundred European passengers drowning at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. Twilight came, but the temperature did not abate. We waited.

All at once, the vast white ship appeared—not as a dot on the horizon, but mammoth, emerging from the mist full-blown before our eyes. The entire pier, with a collective gasp, drew back at the apparition. But the spell was broken by the outbreak of harbormen’s cries, the flinging and catching of rope, the bustle and jostle that followed. Within minutes, a hundred stevedores were unloading freight.

Brill, yelling at me to follow, shouldered through to the gangway. His entreaties to board were rebuffed; no one was being let on or off the ship. It was another hour before Brill yanked at my sleeve and pointed to three passengers descending the bridge. The first of the trio was a distinguished, immaculately groomed, gray-haired, and gray-bearded gentleman whom I knew at once to be the Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud.


At the beginning of the twentieth century, an architectural paroxysm shook New York City. Gigantic towers called skyscrapers soared up one after the other, higher than anything built by the hand of man before. At a ribbon-cutting on Liberty Street in 1908, the top hats applauded as Mayor McClellan declared the forty-seven-story redbrick and bluestone Singer Building the world’s tallest structure. Eighteen months later, the mayor had to repeat the same ceremony at the fifty-story Metropolitan Life tower on Twenty-fourth Street. But even then, they were already breaking ground for Mr. Woolworth’s staggering fifty-eight-story ziggurat back downtown.