home > mystery novel reviews > murder - suicide

Murder - Suicide

by Keith Ablow

Keith Ablow has written another book in his series about Frank Clevenger, the Boston forensic psychiatrist who solves murders. Being a psychiatrist himself, Mr. Ablow is well informed about what he prefers to call 'broken people' – and since most of those in psychology and psychiatry have some difficulty with their lives which lead them to the study of those professions (I know, since I also intended to be a psychologist at first), Keith Ablow gives us an in-depth character for his protagonist. In spite of some lengthy names of various mental aberrations, Mr. Ablow is a compelling writer with a story to envelope you in its clarity as well as its suspense, portraying the human mind in all its complexity.

Dr. John Snow is a genius, an inventor, and a professor at MIT. Just before an operation which could relieve him of his epileptic fits but also erase his memory of past events (including the people in them) he apparently shoots himself in an alley by the hospital. His married lover, Grace Baxter, is also found dead shortly after, with cuts on the wrist and her throat cut. Did she commit suicide because she couldn't live without John? And why did John shoot himself when he was so close to success? Neither death seems to make any sense.

Detective Coady summons Clevenger to the morgue where John Snow's body lies. The neurosurgeon Dr. Jet Heller was to have performed the operation, and tried everything he could to resuscitate Snow, including palpitating the heart with his own hand. The necessary open wound in Snow's chest also obliterated part of the gunshot wound, and now the question in Clevenger's mind is whether or not Snow was murdered – even if it was his own gun that killed him.

Grace Baxter had come to Clevenger as a patient for the first time before Snow was discovered dead. So Clevenger also becomes involved in her demise. Frank rapidly learns that Collin Coroway was Snow's partner in a very lucrative business where Snow was the brains plus inventor and Coroway was the numbers man. Snow had recently been unsuccessful with an invention that could bring in millions. The operation might have changed that – but with it, Snow would run the risk of forgetting his wife, his children, and his lover Grace. The projected operation would have eliminated all past memories. The final pages of the novel reveal the reasoning that caused each death.

Murder - Suicide is a wonderful tale, a voyage inside all human minds – criminal as well as the so-called normal (is there even such a thing?) and Keith Ablow does a great job of depicting it all. Murder - Suicide isn't about the body, as it is primarily with Patyricia Cornwell's terrific books – it's about mentality. Because of that, the book becomes as utterly fascinating as all the complexities of our own thoughts – and who would be better to explain them than Keith Ablow?

Alan Paul Curtis

back