The Death Instinct

After a long time I picked up a fiction suspense thriller to snuggle up with. Authored by Jed Rubenfeld, this is his second piece after “The Interpretation of Murder”.

Courtesy: TLC Books

The book revolves around the 1920 Wall Street bombing which till date has remained unresolved. Using the bombing as the central theme, Rubenfeld weaves different stories into the book. When the bomb goes off a redhead is found with her head severed, a security guard with a gold ingot clutched tightly in his hand and bullet marks on the wall of JP Morgan. Each clue leads to a story of its own, converging in the end to form a cohesive finale. Each story uses facts to strengthen the plot; be it Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis principles on war neurosis or historical facts such as the movement of gold on Wall Street at the time of the bombing.

Throughout the book, Rubenfeld reflects two primary emotions- the world being an ambiguous place to be in and that love does not conquer all. What emerges from these two conclusions is the existence of the ‘Death Instinct”. A passion for destruction that is as fundamental as that for love.  This emotion is again cemented by Freud’s theory on the same topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive )

A wonderful amalgamation of facts and fiction makes this book a page turner and hard to keep down till you have devoured it till the end.

Now, I cant wait to get my hands on “the Interpretation of Murder”.

This book has been reviewed at

Good Reads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8536672-the-death-instinct

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-Instinct-A-Novel/dp/1594485607