Compulsion - Softcover

Ablow, Keith R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312988249 ISBN 13: 9780312988241

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Investigating a particularly disturbing murder involving a billionaire's twin infant daughter, forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger suspects that the main suspect, the baby's adopted teen brother, is innocent, and that the other twin is being targeted by the same killer. Reprint.

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Keith Ablow, M.D., like his protagonist, is a forensic psychiatrist who has testified in some of the nation's most highly publicized trials. He has written two other Frank Clevenger novels, Denial, Projection, and most recently Psychopath. He lives in Massachusetts.

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"Keith Ablow is king of the psychological thriller." -Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River

Burdened by his own psychological scars, brilliant forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Clevenger, has weathered the most extreme twists of the human mind. Then he receives a disturbing call from Nantucket's Chief of Police. The five-month-old daughter of prominent billionaire, Darwin Bishop, has been found murdered in her crib.

"Utterly compelling...a roller coaster of a mystery with hairpin twists and turns that shock and astonish ." -Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of The Surgeon

The obvious suspect is Darwin's adopted sociopathic son, Billy. Even Clevenger can't fathom the motive behind the troubled boy's murder of an infant. But what is Billy really running from? Does Darwin's stunning wife Julia know? If she does, she isn't talking. Neither is the Bishop's other son who's harboring terrible secrets of his own.

"The suspense is riveting and the outcome surprising." --Washington Post Book World

Falling for Julia is Clevenger's first mistake. Investigating the Bishops' twisted emotional landscape is his second. It's done more than just draw him into the maze of a psychosexual family history. It's trapped him. As his own demons rise to the surface, he must play the ultimate mind game to catch a killer-and make it out alive...

"Keith Ablow's setting is the darkest of all-the twists and turns of the human mind. Compulsion is compulsive reading." -Harlan Coben, author of Gone for Good

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Praise for the novels of Keith Ablow

Compulsion
"Compelling, graceful, and nearly impossible to put down."-Robert Parker, author of Widow's Walk

"No one burrows into the darkest recesses of the human mind as deeply as Keith Ablow."
-Tess Gerritsen, author of The Surgeon

"Keith Ablow is a master of psychological suspense. This is a dark, taut, terrifying novel, driven by a talented psychiatrist's insights into the human condition. Stoke up the fire, curl up with Compulsion, and be prepared for a sleepless night."-Michael Palmer, author of Fatal

"Frank Clevenger is a wonderfully flawed hero, as haunted by his own demons as the sociopaths he faces, and Ablow writes like a man possessed-with a pace so blistering the pages will all but singe your hands."-Dennis Lehane, author ofMystic River

"Fast-paced and frightening, Compulsion is a novel that explores the very nature of evil itself. Psychiatrist Frank Clevenger is a hero with heart, soul-and brains."-Janet Evanovich, author ofHard Eight

"From the first sentence to the last, Compulsion is mesmerizing. A tense and sexy thriller stocked to the brim with juicy characters...featuring an utterly shocking, yet thoroughly convincing family of fiends...with deft intelligence, Ablow maps the torturous terrain of the darkest regions of the human heart."-James W. Hall, bestselling author ofBlackwater Sound

"This series just keeps getting better. Frank Clevenger is a real original: a jeans-clad, black-turtleneck-wearing head shaven loner whose compassion for victims of violent crimes-and the perpetrators of those crimes-threatens to destroy him. Whether Clevenger is entirely fictional, or a reflection of his creator's dark side (Ablow is a practicing forensic psychiatrist), the upshot is the same: He's a brilliant creation and this is a brilliant novel."--Booklist(starred reviews)

"The present is wounded by the past in an expertly judged psychological thriller...a solid, satisfying case."--Kirkus Reviews

"The author, a practicing forensic psychiatrist, uses his extensive knowledge of mental illness and violence to lend authenticity to Compulsion, weaving a suspenseful mystery around riveting insights into the criminal mind. An engrossing thriller that belongs on your summer reading list"-Bookpage

"Action nimbly shifts from gritty urban Boston to window-dressed Nantucket, and the people and politics are realistically portrayed, including the ballsy but deeply flawed protagonist...this one scores as a great psychological mind-bender."--Publishers Weekly

Projection
"Projection is a crime novel like no other. It's a week in the loony bin; it's a psycho tour de force. Keith Ablow has the expertise and an overachiever's grasp. Ablow has...the instincts of a Zen Thomas Harris."-James Ellroy, bestselling author ofL.A. Confidential

"This realistic and suspenseful story should please laymen and experts alike."-Booklist

"Projection...isn't for the squeamish...Readers of Thomas Harris's gruesome Hannibal Lector tales...would do well to look here."-Boulder Camera

"Projection is first-rate fiction: smart, tough, and moving."-Robert B. Parker, author ofWidow's Walk

"A trip into the catacombs of the mind...Ablow, a forensic psychiatrist, understands the darkest recesses of the human mind."-Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A tale lavishly laced with sex and violence." -Publishers Weekly

Denial
"A stark and terrifying journey into the mind of the criminally insane. An absolutely spellbinding and shocking tale."--Nelson DeMille

"Gripping...The forensic details are convincing, and the writing is sharp, making Clevenger's return trip from hell an undeniably uplifting story."--Peoplemagazine

"Deftly, with driving prose, Ablow portrays the horror and bleakness of damaged lives." --Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author ofFlesh and Blood

"Sex, murder, madness, and medicine. What more could any thriller reader want? A disturbing, riveting read,Denialis written with insights only a forensic psychiatrist could have, with characters vividly human because they're humanly flawed. Keith Ablow has written the prescription for terror. Readers should fill it only if they are caught up on their sleep."
--Michael Palmer, bestselling author of Fatal

"Denial placed the reader on the cutting edge of psychiatric thrillers, and in the hands of an author whose expertise as a psychiatrist make this story as authentic as it is compelling."
-Bestselling true crime writer Jack Olsen

"Wonderful inside detail...the psychological thriller has gotten some professional help, and it works."-Newsday

"Denial, which is a perfect title, is not easy to read, but it is harder to put down. The characters are compelling for all their flaws, the story is tightly told, and the outcome is anything but predictable."-The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A first-rate debut thriller involving forensic psychology...A distinctly unusual hero...A novel for the self-destructive in all of us."--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"A convincing, seductively fascinating portrait of a man and a milieu obsessed with sensation and trapped in denial of that obsession."--Publishers Weekly

"Every once in a while, a mystery comes along that, while compelling, exciting and satisfying, is more like great literature, than junk food to be gobbled down and immediately forgotten.Denialis such a read, a superb, even sublime, novel."-John L. Schwartz, M.D.,Psychiatric Times

"A powerful first novel by a forensic psychiatrist who plumbs the depths of misery and degradation even better than Patricia Cornwell and as good as Jonathan Kellerman."-The Register Herald (Beckley, WV)

"Ablow weaves an intriguing story...Only someone with this background could create such real characters in a compelling debut."-Southbridge(MA) Evening News

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Compulsion

1

Saturday, June 22, 2002

 

Lilly Cunningham looked up. I melted. She was twenty-nine years old, with pale blue eyes to get lost in. Her blond, curly hair would make any man want to touch it. Her strong forehead predicted intelligence and was perfectly balanced by the gentle slope of her nose. Then there were her full lips, dimples in her cheeks, her long, slender neck. A simple gold cross on a delicate chain pointed toward the curves of her chest and abdomen, rising and falling under a white sheet.

Part of me wanted to let my attention linger on Lilly's beauty, but the bigger part of me loves truth, which is almost always about something ugly. My eyes moved to her exposed thigh.

The flesh was inflamed from groin to knee. The skin had broken down in places, spreading like wet parchment, weeping pinkish fluid. Two serpentine black lines, in Magic Marker, each running twelve or fourteen inches through the muck, showed where her surgeon would make incisions to promote drainage.

A war was being fought. Battle lines had been drawn.

"I don't believe we've met," Lilly said, her voice straining.

"Dr. Clevenger," I said, still focused on her thigh. Istayed several feet from the bed, which is my habit when first seeing patients.

"Hmm. Shaved head, jeans, cowboy boots. You don't look like any doctor I've ever seen. Certainly not at Mass General."

I met her gaze. "What do I look like?"

She worked at a smile. "I don't know. An artist, maybe ... or a bartender." She laughed, but weakly. "You have a first name?"

"Frank."

"Okay, then, Dr. Frank Clevenger. What's your line? Surgery? Internal medicine? Infectious disease?"

"I'm a psychiatrist."

She shook her head and turned toward the wall. "This is un-fucking believable."

I stood there a few moments, staring through the tangle of IV tubing that dripped amphotericin and vancomycin into Lilly's subclavian vein. A window just beyond the hanging bottles looked onto Boston's Charles River at dusk, its waters blue-gray and utterly still. I tried again. "Do you mind if I ask a few questions?"

"You can do whatever you want. I don't care."

I heard a fusion of anger and surrender in her voice. And I sensed something more in the way she half-whispered, half-swallowed the word care. A hint of seductiveness. Her tone made me imagine that I could, quite literally, do whatever I wanted to her. I took a mental note of that feeling, wondering whether she provoked it in others--and why. I stepped closer to the bed. "Do you know why your doctors asked me to see you?"

"Probably because they keep screwing up," she complained, shaking her head and exhaling in exasperation. "They can't figure out what's wrong with me, so they're calling me crazy."

That was half right. Her doctors were calling her crazy, but they had figured out exactly what was wrong with her--at least, physically.

Drake Slattery, chief of the internal medicine department,had filled me in. He is a lumberjack of a man who wrestled for Duke, and the muscles of his crossed arms had begun to ripple as he spoke. "She presented about four months ago, fresh from her honeymoon on St. Bart's. Mild fever, red blotch on her thigh. I'm figuring some tropical insect took a bite out of her, left her with a little cellulitis. Nothing to write home about. Like an idiot, though, I trash my whole schedule to get her worked up and started on antibiotics right away."

"Is she that pretty?" I had asked.

He looked offended. "Professional courtesy; she's a nurse over at Brigham & Women's."

"Fair enough."

"And she happens to be gorgeous."

I smiled.

"So I dose her up on ampicillin, which seems to work," he said. "But then, two weeks later, she's back in the emergency room. The leg is puffed up twice normal size. She says she feels like someone's jamming a red-hot knife into her thigh. And she's running a fever of 103." His arms started rippling, again. "The ampicillin doesn't seem to cut it anymore, so I add a chaser of Rocephin. And the swelling goes down pretty quickly. All's well that ends well, right? Sometimes you have to go after the bugs with bigger guns."

Slattery was an avid hunter, which made it hard for me to like him, despite his rare combination of genius and dry wit. "You're the shooter," I said.

He winked. "Five days later, she's down in the ER again, bigger and redder than ever. Shaking like a leaf. Fever of 105. Now I'm worried. I don't know what to think. Lymphatic obstruction from a malignancy? Sarcoidosis? I even wondered about some weird presentation of AIDS. I never guessed what was really going on."

Over the next few months, Slattery admitted Lilly to Mass General four times, treating her with a dozen different antifungal and antibiotic agents. Some seemed successful, dropping her white blood cell count and stopping the chills and sweats that plagued her. But, inevitably, she would returnto the emergency room within days, infected and feverish again.

A CAT scan of her leg showed no tumor. A bone scan revealed no osteomyelitis. Repeated blood cultures failed to turn up any offending bacterium. So Slattery finally had a surgeon biopsy the semitendinous and biceps femoris muscles of Lilly's leg. He forwarded the tissue samples to the bacteriology laboratory of the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Bethesda, Maryland. The report came in a week later: Pseudomonas fluorescens, a pathogen generally found in soil.

"We gave her husband the news first," Slattery had told me. "He broke down and admitted he'd found a frigging syringe caked with mud at the back of one of her drawers. Wrapped in a pair of her panties."

That image turned my skin to gooseflesh.

"Here we are busting our asses trying to keep this mental case from losing her leg," Slattery went on, "and it turns out she's been injecting herself with dirt."

"That might say something about how she sees herself," I said.

"To you, maybe. To me, it says she has no business being in the hospital. She's stealing--my time, not to mention the hospital's resources."

"I'd bet this case is all about stealing. But the key is to figure out what was stolen from her."

"You're the poet," Slattery had said wryly. "That's why I called you in."

I looked at Lilly lying in bed, still facing the wall. The technical term for her condition was Munchausen syndrome, intentionally creating physical symptoms in order to get attention from doctors. The name derives from Baron Karl Friedrich von Münchausen, a Paul Bunyan-like storyteller. Research studies have shown that a high percentage of patients with the disorder have, like Lilly, worked in the health care field.

Many patients with Munchausen syndrome were also hospitalized when they were children. One theory is thatthey faced terrible abuse at home and were so relieved by the kindness shown them by doctors that they came to associate being sick with being safe. As adults they became dependent on using the sick role to numb their underlying emotional pain and keep distressing memories from surfacing--the same way drug addicts use heroin.

To treat Munchausen's, a psychiatrist must coax the patient to confront the original psychological trauma he or she has repressed. If that sounds simple, it isn't. People with Munchausen's will generally flee treatment to avoid any exploration of their underlying problems.

Trying to get Lilly to admit she had caused the infection would just make her shut down. The important thing was to let her know I understood that she was infected. Only one...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312988249
• ISBN 13: 9780312988241
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar