THE MIDNIGHT PATIENT

by Egon Hostovsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 1954

A strange, sinister and often delusionary drama proceeds on one level to expose a Communist agent, and on another is symptomatic of a sick society, and its phantom world of persecution and pursuit in the hot-cold war not only between men, but between concepts. Arnost Malik, a Czechoslovakian and a psychiatrist without a practise, is approached by a Colonel Robert Howard of the Psychological Warfare Institute to resume his profession- and thereby attract the attention of an important agent- wanted by the Soviet- and known by the code name, Alfons. Alfons becomes his midnight patient- but there are others to whom he opens his office door- and always there is the question are they real patients or Russians. A man named Prengel alerts the warning of an unknown doctor; Kaminsky, a writer, weeps constantly- in terror- and is murdered; Colonel Howard dies, but not the suspicion that he too may have been a Russian informant; Alfons kills himself, and finally Kaminsky is killed; and the whole hallucinatory experience ends in a freedom for Malik he had not expected to find..... A psychological suspense story which pursues its action- and argument- on an intellectual terrain, this is effective and suggestive.

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION