Helpful Score: 3
What a fabulous thriller! it had me from beginning to end, i couldn't put it down. The character development is great. Would highly recommend to anyone who likes this genre.
Helpful Score: 3
Many books are hyped as something entirely new in the mystery genre; this book is exactly that.
Set in a mental hospital in the 1970's, the primary plot line concerns the murder of a young nurse-trainee, and the repercussions of that time on one of the patients many years later. Seeing the events through the eyes of a schizophrenic is both eerie and compelling. The portrayal of life for patients in a mental hospital in that time period is painfully accurate and disturbing, their treatment basically a program of constantly adjusted medication cocktails and farcical group therapy sessions. The reader grows to know and sincerely care about the characters of several patients; the characters of the doctors are far less sympathetic.
The book succeeds on many levels: as compelling character study, genuinely puzzling mystery, page-turning thriller, and portrayal of fairly recent history. It's also occasionally reminiscent of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but with less black humor and more edge-of-seat drama. If you're in the mood for a very different puzzler, give this book a try!
Set in a mental hospital in the 1970's, the primary plot line concerns the murder of a young nurse-trainee, and the repercussions of that time on one of the patients many years later. Seeing the events through the eyes of a schizophrenic is both eerie and compelling. The portrayal of life for patients in a mental hospital in that time period is painfully accurate and disturbing, their treatment basically a program of constantly adjusted medication cocktails and farcical group therapy sessions. The reader grows to know and sincerely care about the characters of several patients; the characters of the doctors are far less sympathetic.
The book succeeds on many levels: as compelling character study, genuinely puzzling mystery, page-turning thriller, and portrayal of fairly recent history. It's also occasionally reminiscent of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but with less black humor and more edge-of-seat drama. If you're in the mood for a very different puzzler, give this book a try!
Helpful Score: 1
a crime is revisited through a mentally ill mans memories.
Helpful Score: 1
Really good mystery. When a nurse is found murdered in a mental hospital, the patients are the perfect scapegoat. Great characters too!
Excellent. I worked in a psych center for 10 years and this book nails it.
