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Title: Denial: A Novel by Keith Ablow, Keith R. Ablow ISBN: 0-679-44211-1 Publisher: Random House Inc Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (42 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Deliciously flawed characters
Comment: Ten pages into Denial, I hastily emailed a friend of mine who's a big fan of Hardboiled mysteries and told him, "Have I got an author for you!" This is believably seamy stuff, quickly paced, smart and scary, filled with deliciously flawed characters. Ablow doesn't even place his protagonist above the fray: Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist with severe addiction issues--including coke, women other than his partner, and twisted psyches. There is not a character in this book who is free of quirks and tics, and it is from this pallette of dark human vagary that the story draws its power and its very plot.
As one who lives in Eastern Massachusetts, I was taken by Ablow's adept use of local geography. Clevenger lives in one of those big houses in coastal Marblehead that require two doctors to support a mortgage; he works and plays, if such a word can cover his particular recreations, in his rag-tag hometown of "Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin," and in equally gritty Chelsea. The duality fits the man, an abused blue-collar boy beneath a professional veneer.
With its sex, blood and lines of white powder, this book is not for everyone. But for those who like their mystery dark and their humanity imperfect, it's a real find.
Susan O'Neill
Author: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam
Rating: 4
Summary: A SURPRISINGLY GOOD BOOK FROM A FIRST-TIME AUTHOR
Comment: I actually bought this book in error, thinking I was ordering something by another author Keith Snyder. You can imagine my surprise upon reading it, that I had accidentally come upon a debut novel by a really terrific writer.
Frank Cleavenger is a forensic psychiatrist who interviews suspected murderers. He also snorts cocaine and has as troubled a mind as some of the people he's interviewing but he knows how to keep it in check. The author is also a psychiatrist himself so the research is obviously first hand and this makes the main character so much more believable. In this book, a small town in Massachusetts has a psycho-murderer on its hands and Cleavenger is called in on the case.
Other characters that add to this psychological thriller are Trevor Lucas, a psychopathic plastic surgeon whose former patients are being killed and Kathy, who is living with Cleavenger while using Trevor as a part-time lover. Frank's volatile nature adds to the excitement of this book. Ablow has since written a sequel, Projection, which I'm anxious to read after getting through this riveting book all in one piece.
Rating: 4
Summary: King of Denial (and sorry for reworking the pun).
Comment: I only picked this one up because I started reading PSYCHOPATH, but quickly realized that this was probably a series that needed to be read from the first novel. I am amused at the extreme difference in ratings and comments from other reviewers; but just being able to evoke such different reactions suggests that the author is doing something right. Ablow's Frank Clevenger is definitely not a likable character (and he does fall a touch short of Hannibal Lector's admitted sophistication), but at the same time I was fascinated by the story and am certain I will remain along on the ride for any future novels in the series. Also being a fan of Stephen White's Alan Gregory - another detective of the inner workings of the mind - novels, I believe that it will be interesting to compare & contrast the manner in which each character is affected by interacting with their respective 'clients', if that is the word for them.
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Title: Compulsion (Frank Clevenger) by Keith Ablow ISBN: 0312988249 Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks Pub. Date: 16 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Psychopath: A Novel by Keith Ablow ISBN: 0312266715 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Murder Suicide : A Novel by Keith Ablow ISBN: 0312323891 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2004 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Without Mercy: The Shocking True Story of a Doctor Who Murdered by Keith R. Ablow, Keith Russell Ablow ISBN: 0312959230 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: To Wrestle With Demons: A Psychiatrist Struggles to Understand His Patients and Himself by Keith R. Ablow, Richard Downs, Keith Russell Ablow ISBN: 0786701668 Publisher: Pub Group West Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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