Murder Suicide » (Reprint)

KEITH ABLOW, like his protagonist, is a forensic psychiatrist who has testified in some of the nation's most highly publicized trials. He has written four other Dr. Frank Clevenger novels: Denial, Projection, Compulsion, and Psychopath. Ablow lives in Massachusetts. Visit his Web site at www.keithablow.com.

HE POSSESSED WEALTH, FAME, GENIUS-

An hour before inventor John Snow is to undergo experimental brain surgery, he's discovered outside Massachusetts General Hospital, dead from a single bullet wound. Did he commit suicide as the police suspect-or was he murdered?

AND A DARK SECRET...

Forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger is about to find out. As he digs into Snow's complex past, he discovers a host of tortured relationships: The wife who can never forgive what Snow has done to their child and their marriage... The son who loathes him... The beautiful mistress who loves him deeply but can never have him... The business partner intent on taking control of his inventions...

THAT COULD DESTROY THE LIVES OF ALL HE KNEW...

Whatever secret Snow took to his grave, it is casting a shadow of suspicion over the people who said they loved him. Now Clevenger must venture into a dead man's dark past to unearth the truth-in an explosive mystery of passion and betrayal.

"Murder Suicide poses intriguing questions...[a] tightly plotted book."

-San Antonio Express News

"Elaborately plotted...offers the reader more substantial fare than the usual mystery lineup of corpses and cops."

-USA Today

Publishers Weekly

Number five in Ablow's Dr. Frank Clevenger series (after 2003's Psychopath) continues the forensic psychiatrist's insightful investigations into intricate and deadly puzzles. Called in by a stumped Boston police department, Clevenger applies his skills to the mystery surrounding genius inventor John Snow, who is found shot outside Massachusetts General Hospital just an hour before he is to undergo experimental brain surgery. The police want Clevenger to determine if the death is murder or suicide. When Snow's lover, Grace Baxter, is found several days later with a slashed throat and wrists, the question surfaces again. Clevenger is a meticulous procedural investigator; he and partner North Anderson follow each and every lead to its logical, if sometimes tedious, conclusion. Clevenger's m tier is interviewing suspects, and there's a surplus of them as family, friends and enemies, any one of whom could have killed the eccentric Snow, parade through the pages. Clevenger's problematic personal life is again examined in detail: adopted 18-year-old Billy is still challenging Clevenger's shaky parenting skills, and Clevenger's love affair with FBI chief forensic psychiatrist Whitney McCormick is always on-again, off-again. Drugs and alcohol, two other demons from his past, wait in the wings. Clevenger agonizes over all of this while methodically solving the riddle of Snow's murder, playing each of the suspects against the other until he tricks a confession out of the guilty party. While the excitement is not exactly pulse pounding, Clevenger puts in some solid sleuthing, and the low body count is refreshing amid a sea of frenetic thrillers in which victims number in double digits. Agent, Beth Vesel. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.