Author: Lisa Scottoline
Dr. Eric Parrish is the Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at Havemeyer General Hospital outside of Philadelphia. Recently separated from his wife, Caitlin, he is doing his best as a single dad to his seven-year-old daughter Hannah. His work seems to be going better than his home life, however. His unit at the hospital has just been named number two in the country and Eric has a devoted staff of doctors and nurses who are as caring as Eric is. But when he takes on a new patient, Eric's entire world begins to crumble. Seventeen-year-old Max has a terminally ill grandmother and is having trouble handling it. That, plus his OCD and violent thoughts about a girl he likes makes Max a high risk patient. Max can't turn off the rituals he needs to perform every fifteen minutes that keep him calm. With the pressure mounting, Max just might reach the breaking point. When the girl is found murdered, Max is nowhere to be found. Worried about Max, Eric goes looking for him and puts himself in danger of being seen as a "person of interest". Next, one of his own staff turns on him in a trumped up charge of sexual harassment. Is this chaos all random? Or is someone systematically trying to destroy Eric's life? -Goodreads
Review: "I'm a sociopath. I look normal, but I'm not. I'm smarter, better, and freer, because I'm not bound by rules, law, emotion, or regard for you. I can read you almost immediately, get your number right away, and push your buttons to make you do whatever I want. I don't really like you, but I'm so good at acting as if I do that it's basically the same thing ... I fool everybody."
Wow-this is one of my favorite openings ever. I was immediately engaged in this book...that is until our protagonist, Dr. Eric Parrish became the focus. Once he meets troubled teen Max, Eric starts to make bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision. At one point I was hoping his estranged wife was the sociopath after him, because he was such a patsy (at one point, he discovers she sold their family home after telling him she wouldn't and that she had a new boyfriend...so he goes ahead and mows her lawn because he's such a nice guy). That being said, the author mixed in occasional chapters from the sociopath's point of view, which kept me very interested in the story. Even though Eric was annoying, this was fast paced and a lot of twists and turns. I figured out who the sociopath was, but there were several things that happened at the end of the book that I wasn't expecting.
Overall-good read.
Grade: 3/5
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