While the large cast slows its momentum, this courtroom tale should appeal to readers who enjoy legal and psychological...
When one psychologist accuses another of planting false memories in a client’s mind, everybody lawyers up and someone winds up dead.
In Kluft’s (Good Shrink/Bad Shrink, 2014, etc.) latest novel, attractive young associate Linda Gilchrist becomes part of the defense team for even more striking Dr. Joan Underwood, the target of a lawsuit by another psychologist, Dr. Gordon Travers. Underwood had treated one of Travers’ former patients, Melody Jarrett, who suffered from multiple personality disorder. One of Jarrett’s personalities said Travers had molested her during her counseling sessions with him. Travers said the “recovered memories” Underwood brought to the surface were false, and that revealing them damaged his practice and reputation. But Gilchrist’s team feels Travers doth protest too much, and that he thinks “he can ride that whole false memory thing to a big payday” against Underwood and the hospital she worked for while treating Jarrett. But is Travers in the right, and does Jarrett have some hidden agenda? She did leave his practice abruptly, and then refused to take his calls. Curiously, the governor has a private interest in the case. He also has a personal interest in well-connected Billie Mason, a beautiful woman with a backstory who’s “admired for her gravity-defying bust.” The author is a professor of clinical psychology who has served as an expert witness and a defendant in trials involving false memory. His knowledge and experience allow him as a novelist to get into the weeds of the subject, offering intriguing details and realistic courtroom scenes. But the throughline of the book can get lost among the discussions of marital woes and favorite mystery writers. In addition, an overabundance of characters bogs down the story. To help readers, a two-page glossary of major players is provided, but while it includes an entry for a dog, it fails to list key character Travers. Graphic language may put off some readers. But others will delight in seeing various players’ secrets unspool in and outside of the courtroom.
While the large cast slows its momentum, this courtroom tale should appeal to readers who enjoy legal and psychological maneuvers.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-949093-27-8
Page Count: 427
Publisher: IPBooks
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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