Book Review: Psychopath

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Psychopath     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Keith Ablow
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Serial Killer   Thriller
Series: Frank Clevenger # 4
St. Martin’s, July 2003, $19.95, 336 pp.

He travels the highways of America killing when the compulsion becomes unbearable but he always gets his victims to trust him and talk to him so he can get inside their defenses before he delivers the fatal blow. He is known as the Highway Killer and the FBI credit him with at least fourteen known homicides even though he believes he killed sevnteen people, men and women, young and old with no discernible pattern.

The FBI is getting desperate so they call in forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger as consultant. This resonates with the Highway Killer and he engages Clevenger in a dialog played out in the New York Times for the world to see. It is an interesting but potentially deadly cat and mouse game these two individuals play because they were both victims of parental abuse as children and they are both practicing psychiatrists.

Keith Ablow does the impossible by making the audience feel genuine sympathy for a serial killer tormented by his demons and his inability to stop from killing even though he knows it is wrong. As a doctor he has saved the lives of many children in crises but he can not heal himself. PSYCHOPATH is a fascinating and exciting medical thriller about a tormented person who wears the mask of sanity on the outside, but inside is a tortured soul who wants to be stopped.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner

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