DEADLY ADMIRER

Just because suicidal district nurse Vanessa Wootten is paranoid (and manic-depressive too), does that mean that nobody's out to get her? She insists to nurse/detective Kate Kinsella (Deadly Errand, 1992) that someone's following her and making threatening calls; but no one who knows Vanessa's medical history (two psychiatric hospitalizations before her present suicide attempt) believes her, and even Kate has trouble swallowing some of her wilder accusations—that she was raped by her ex-lover, constable Paul Oakby, and terrorized by her estranged sister Sheila's onetime fiancÇ Colin Tiffield. In the meantime, murder (beginning with a harmless elderly patient of hers) has been following Vanessa almost as closely as unsuitable men. Whether or not she's right about being persecuted, somebody's sure telling a pack of lies. Overloaded with people and incidents (some of them fascinating, like Kate's all-night vigil with a suicidal young doctor) that obscure the strong central situation here. But Green's inventive powers are almost as prodigious as Vanessa's.