Killing Time

Hackneyed, geeky, and ungrammatical, Caleb Carr’s latest is a noirish bit of apocalyptic sci-fi that incoherently delivers the news that seeing isn’t believing. In the year 2023, criminal-psychology professor Dr. Gideon Wolfe starts asking too many questions about the murder of a special-effects technician. Next thing you know, the doc links up with a sassy band of academics who, led by a sickly zillionaire mastermind, zip around the globe ���combatting the information society” by perpetrating digital hoaxes. For all its faults, Carr’s signature work, 1995’s The Alienist, was genuinely gripping; Killing Time only leaves you griping. D