IN THE May 21 ISSUE
Today's holiday gift recommendation comes from C.J. West and his beautiful Wheaten Terrier, Bella. Besides being the author of The End of Marking Time, C.J. hosts a blog talk radio show where you'll find interviews with a number of the authors featured on Jen's Book Thoughts. And C.J. is recommending one of those authors for your holiday list today: Dennis Palumbo and his new Daniel Rinaldi mystery, MIRROR IMAGE."I was intrigued by Dennis Palumbo at Bouchercon By the Bay. He's a psychologist for writers with some fascinating advice and insight into what our creative struggles mean for us and for our work. His latest mystery, Mirror Image, had me so captivated by page four that I knew I needed to have him on my show."
Mirror Image
By Dennis Palumbo
Poisoned Pen Press
August, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59058-750-9
Hardcover, 334 pp., $24.95
Reviewed by Gloria Feit
Kevin Merrick, a patient of Dr. Dan Rinaldi for six months, had finally made a breakthrough of sorts, overcoming the self-imposed barriers and opening up about the traumatic events in his childhood. Now 23 years old, he has used drugs, cutting, and other ways of dealing with his problems. Now Danny feels he may be able to help him in a more lasting way. However, shortly after leaving Danny’s office, and in his building’s parking lot, Kevin is murdered.
A clinical psychologist, Danny is an outside consultant with the Pittsburgh P.D., his specialty being treating victims of violent crime. Having himself suffered from just such a trauma five years earlier, in an incident which left his wife dead and him seriously injured, he can truly ‘feel their pain’ [to uses a current cliché]. Danny’s life is placed in jeopardy of various kinds: he is threatened with the loss of his professional license for his choice of treatment of the dead boy; and the police see him as a ‘person of interest’ in the boy’s murder or, in the alternative, the intended victim and now next on the killer’s agenda. Through all this he needs to try to deal with more than one prior patient who starts to become unglued as matters escalate in this compelling noir thriller.
Mr. Palumbo, a psychotherapist himself, draws interesting characters: Danny himself; Sgt. Harry Polk, “a beer keg in a wrinkled blue suit;” his partner, Det. Eleanor Lowrey, and Casey Walters, the erratic, erotic young ADA. And beyond all the action, and all the sex, the identity of the murderer stays tantalizingly out of reach, with Danny’s life still at risk, until the final pages. This is the author’s first novel, and though that seems apparent at some times more than others [e.g., “I ducked my head under the scalding water. I wanted it to burn, to sear off the day’s events, to scour me clean” and “the purple sky looked like a bruise], overall I loved the writing, e.g., “. . . the old precinct house. A century of brutal Pittsburgh winters had etched huge worry lines in the face it showed the world” and “Pennsylvania is a green state, never greener than after a heavy rain. Trees glisten, leaves studded with tears. Puffs of wind push around the big clouds, sun-speckled, intensely white. The old Appalachian Hills, sloping away before spreading urban tendrils, looking as pristine and timeless as when the first settlers came over four hundred years ago.” [I also greatly enjoyed the protagonist’s, and I assume the author’s, choice of music, and jazzmen, sprinkled through the tale.] Recommended.
Author: Dennis Palumbo
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 1590587529
Click Here To Purchase Mirror Image
An upbeat setting, convincing characters and a plot that has one on the edge of one’s seat from page one—what more could a reader ask for in a crime novel? Once more, established mystery writer Dennis Palumbo has pulled off a fine fast-paced whodunnit that has one yearning for more. Set in Pittsburgh, with the backdrop of the “old Appalachian Hills, sloping away before spreading urban tendrils, looking as pristine and timeless as when the first settlers came over four hundred years ago”, the novel has such tangible atmosphere that the reader is locked into the plot by Palumbo’s versatile writing, which changes from poetic description to slick dialogue in the blink of an eye.
The characters range from the psychotic (with part of the novel being set in a psychiatric institution, which has its fair share of scary and battle-scarred inmates) to the professional (though the latter seem, at times, not to be too far off the former…). Palumbo’s own background as a psychotherapist enables him to imbue the lead character with authenticity and compassion towards the emotionally maimed and much undervalued social misfits.
Dr. Daniel Rinaldi is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating victims of violent crime, to which he himself has also, ironically enough, been subject, with his wife being shot in a mugging in front of his very eyes. So, in a way, he also has some emotional baggage with which to contend. Not only that, but he’s also at loggerheads with Dr. Brooks Riley, Chief Psychiatrist at Ten Oaks, the most successful private psychiatric facility in the state of Pennsylvania, who’s determined to see to it that he gets Rinaldi’s license revoked.
When a patient of Rinaldi’s opts for dressing just like him, and gets viciously stabbed to death just outside the doc’s offices, all hell breaks loose. Tracking down the suspect, naturally, forms the major impetus of the plot, though there are loads of characters whose interrelationships tend at times to be of the rockiest kind, but at times reflect what true friendship is all about. The professional details regarding post-traumatic stress disorder which are neatly woven into the plot are fascinating. The characters are well-rounded and credible, with a fair amount of attraction between the sexes adding extra spice to the unfolding drama.
One cannot doubt that Palumbo has hands-on experience of the police and court proceedings which are so integral to the plot. His mystery stories have appeared in the past in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine and Written By, among other eminent journals. Mirror Image should make a great read for anyone interested in the crime genre, as long as you are open-minded enough not to mind the occasional cussing which goes with the territory.
Click Here To Purchase Mirror Image
Lois Henderson
Reviewer Lois Henderson: Lois has a MA General Linguistics, BA (English) Honors, Higher Education Diploma, Higher Diploma in Library and Information Science - indexer of more than 130 books; editor of dozens of theses and study manuals at university and college level.
After which, he'll be signing copies of his new crime novel, Mirror Image.
The Mystery Bookstore LA
CONTACT: 310-209-0415 or 800-821-9017
Mirror Image, the debut novel from one-time Hollywood screenwriter and University of Pittsburgh graduate Dennis Palumbo, is as cerebral a thriller as they come.
Featuring an unlikely protagonist—psychologist and former Golden Gloves pugilist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi—Mirror Image is a stark and suspenseful ride put into motion when Kevin Merrick, a troubled college student who begins to dress like Rinaldi, turns up dead. Faced with the very real possibility that he, and not Kevin, was the intended target, Rinaldi is determined to find the killer.
But “when Kevin’s identity as the estranged son of a Bill Gates-like biotech giant is revealed, the investigation of his murder turns into a national story, even as another person turns up dead.” The only question is whether Rinaldi can bring the culprit to justice before it’s too late.
Mirror Image spins a labyrinthine tale set under the murky skies and in the urban streets of Pittsburgh and is packed with enough plot twists, hardboiled characters and fast-talking women to please even the most casual noir fan.
"Dennis Palumbo establishes himself as a master story-teller with his first crime novel, Mirror Image. Using his background as a licensed psychotherapist to good advantage, Palumbo infuses his fast-moving, suspenseful story with fascinating texture, interesting characters, and the twists, turns and surprises of a mind-bending mystery. Very impressive."
---Stephen J. Cannell (writer/creator of The Rockford Files; New York Times best-selling mystery author)
"Mirror Image is a rich, complex thriller, built around a sizzling love affair. A compelling read, with surprising twists and characters that leap off the page."
---Bobby Moresco (Oscar-winning writer/producer of Crash and Million Dollar Baby)
"Mirror Image is a deviously plotted thriller with lots of shocks and surprises you won't see coming, and a smart, sympathetic hero-narrator who takes you along as he peels back layers of lies and wrong guesses to get closer to the truth."
---Thomas Perry (Edgar-winning, New York Times best-selling crime novelist)
"Dennis Palumbo's experience as a psychotherapist hasn't just helped him make his hero, therapist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, authentic, human and a man in full, it's endowed him with the insight to craft a debut thriller filled with action, deduction and romance, expertly paced for maximum suspense."
---Dick Lochte, award-winning author and critic
"Dennis Palumbo's novel is stark and disturbing but there's a humanity running through the core of it that makes this book special. Maybe it's Palumbo's dual training – as a writer and as a psychotherapist – that allows him to plumb the depths and bring up not only darkness but those occasional diamonds of light that sparkle and illuminate and make a book worth reading."
---T. Jefferson Parker (Edgar-winning, New York Times best-selling author of The Renegades and
"Mirror Image is a standout mind-bender! A wonderfully constructed novel that has you seeing double---and all through the eyes of an intriguingly fresh character: a psychologist. Dennis Palumbo knows his craft. This guy can write."
---Ridley Pearson (New York Times best-selling crime author)
"A gripping thriller, chock full of the desired twists and cliffhangers, with the added layer and intriguing access of a therapist narrator/detective. A page turner!"
---Aimee Bender (New York Times best-selling author of An Invisible Sign of My Own)
Title: Mirror Image
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