The Space Between Breaths

A famously peaceful spiritual counselor is accused of killing the man who murdered her wife in Schorr’s philosophically charged crime drama.

Dr. Lylarose Gentry, an “accomplished psychologist and meditation guru to a clientele of A-List stars,” is known as one of the “most life affirming, non-violent people on the planet.” That reputation makes it all the more shocking when she becomes a suspect in a macabre shooting at an Oakland corrections facility that leaves two officers dead alongside Keith Allen, the violent misogynist who murdered Marian Fitzwater, Lylarose’s wife. For most of this absorbing narrative, the details of the shooting remain tantalizingly obscure, but it is certain that Lylarose was acting as a therapist to the incarcerated Allen, a bizarre circumstance that is, unfortunately, never rendered even minimally plausible (Allen threatened to sue the state if she didn’t counsel him, a nonsensical possibility). The police have reason to believe it was not Allen but Lylarose who was responsible for the shooting, exposing “a façade of harmless spirituality hiding murderous intent.” She is shot as well, and plunged into a coma, but she still narrates the tale, detailing a troubled youth: A prodigiously talented child, Lylarose was “studied like a lab rat” and pledged to free herself from her family’s “legacy of violence” by healing others. Schorr thoughtfully explores both the nobler and baser aspects of the commercial self-help cosmos—a protege of Lylarose, Penelope Fine, is complexly drawn as an illustration of how the language of therapy can be used to rationalize less enlightened motivations. Lylarose’s purported genius is often less than convincing, despite how often the narrative insists upon it—especially when she speaks in the hackneyed vernacular of any self-help book (“The journey of compassion-based healing has to be unencumbered. We need safe, focused space”). Nevertheless, Schorr has concocted a genuinely captivating crime drama coupled with intelligent social commentary.

A fresh take on the murder mystery.