Set in Victorian London, The Analyst follows a trail of intrigue in a realistic period setting reflecting a scientific society that still has a dark underside of squalid desolation. It tells of the grim struggle of a man's sanity slipping away, gradually deteriorating to the point of him eventually going over the edge with horrendous consequences. The novel is directed at the psychological conscience-probing mystery section of the fiction market, the main character's mental conflict, with its hauntingly mind-searching flashbacks putting it into the Freudian/Hyde bracket.