Dennis Palumbo’s Daniel Rinaldi Reconciles His Past in Head Wounds

We all look forward to the debut of a new Daniel Rinaldi novel and reunion with the psychologist we all would like to consult. Head Wounds (2018) is the fifth and latest in the Rinaldi series, and it does not disappoint. Rinaldi’s warmth and his tendency to run a bit afoul of the system is still evident and reading it is like welcoming back an old friend.

As Head Wounds begins, Rinaldi still cannot quite move on from the past. His wife’s murder has deviled him in every preceding book in the series. He cannot accept the conclusion that Pittsburg Police have agreed upon: Barbara Rinaldi’s death was a mugging gone wrong. Rinaldi nearly lost his own life in the attack and incurred infinite blame from Barbara’s father, who made his professional and personal life equally miserable. The irony is, of course, that Barbara’s father need not have bothered because no one could hold him more responsible than did Rinaldi himself. By this time, he has come closer to putting his life back together and taken up his practice. However, he has succeeded in resuming his life, survivor’s guilt has haunted him. Now it seems that a background investigation dossier from an outside source on Rinaldi himself has emerged reviving a hope that something new will emerge to further the investigation.

Now, years after the event, Rinaldi gets more than he bargained for when a person of interest emerges to finish what started that evening in a restaurant parking lot. We learn that Barbara’s past had complexities Rinaldi was ignorant of and that a quirk of fate kept Rinaldi in relative safety these past years. All bets are off as Rinaldi and his associates are harassed, threatened, and put in physical jeopardy while Rinaldi’s life threatens to unravel. We meet an adversary worthy of the term who has had the ensuing years to plan his revenge and is one or two steps ahead of Rinaldi at every turn. That this perpetrator does not quite have all the facts of Rinaldi’s life straight makes him unpredictable. That he is brilliant, egotistical, and relentless ups the stakes.

No small part of the pleasure in reading Head Wounds is reacquainting ourselves with Palumbo’s recurring characters in the police as well as in Rinaldi’s personal and professional life. We meet Harry Polk again who somehow makes irascibility and professionalism work in tandem to make him a better cop. It would be too easy to dislike Polk if not for the way his character develops in every novel. Very good to see him and his take on Rinaldi’s tormentor.

Also, back again is former FBI profiler, Lyle Barnes–he of the “night terrors” that still have not quite gone away. Barnes’s situational analysis, not to mention his many years of experience dealing with the most elusive and canny of the worst of the nation’s criminals, makes him a sterling cohort. Barnes knows all too well what the experience of having a clever, calculating murderer on his trail is like. Also back are Noah and Charlene who run the bar Rinaldi is particularly fond of and spends time in frequently to our delight. Besides being a big sweetie, Noah is a paranoid schizophrenic who stays on his meds and the straight and narrow thanks to his partner Charlene. I always look forward to Rinaldi’s down time at the bar not least because its informality encourages all the characters involved to speak their minds and reveal more than was intended—Rinaldi included.

So sit back and enjoy yourself welcoming back people who are part of your reading life. Is it too early to be anticipating the next Rinaldi novel?

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Sharon Tucker is former faculty at the University of Memphis in Memphis TN, and now enjoys evening supervising in that campus library. Having forsworn TV except for online viewing and her own movies, she reads an average of 3 to 4 books per week and has her first novel—a mystery, of course—well underway.

Kings River Life Magazine Feature: Dennis Palumbo’s Dr. Daniel Rinaldi: A Good Man to Have on Your Side

Be content with what you have: rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. —Lao Tzu

Employing a psychologist or a psychiatrist as a part of an investigative team makes perfect sense. It has worked well for Val McDermid and her Dr. Tony Hill. Even Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter, though insane, had professional insights that helped Clarice Starling find “Buffalo Bill” after all. Enter Daniel Rinaldi, Dennis Palumbo’s clinical psychologist based in Pittsburgh. Rinaldi, no stranger to trauma and personal loss himself, is the therapist we dream of: worthy of trust, adept at his job, and flawed just enough to make him interesting but not enough to damage any of us or his patients. He is pulled into Pittsburgh’s Police Department for more than one reason and shoulders his way through resentment and obstructions to help both patients and friends involved in or with law enforcement.

Mirror Image (2010) introduces police consultant, trauma specialist, and therapist Daniel Rinaldi who finds himself a murder suspect when one of his patients turns up murdered. His personal and professional jeopardy increases when a contentious colleague wants Rinaldi brought up on charges but turns up murdered. Rinaldi tries to treat the survivor of a brutal bank robbery in Fever Dream (2011), but she keeps vanishing. The investigation is further compromised by one (or more) of the police detectives who is busy going off the rails. And since profilers spend their professional lives studying the worst criminals among us, when one of them needs a therapist, in the spirit of law enforcement inter-department co-operation, Rinaldi is shanghaied to assist in Night Terrors (2013).

Although patient treatment usually falls into recognizable categories, therapists may have conflicting views on what is benign enough to be ignored in their patients’ behavior and what should be directly addressed. In Mirror Image the murder of one of Rinaldi’s patients outrages one of Rinaldi’s colleagues to the extent that violence ensues between the two doctors. Events progress even more dangerously so that Rinaldi becomes a murder suspect twice over. The hits just keep on coming for the good doctor when he crosses a magnate wealthy beyond our ken who is determined to ruin the doctor’s reputation in a national media campaign.

Rinaldi’s personal experience with trauma has made him a better therapist, but he isn’t immune to conflict surrounding survivors as they cope with the aftermath of violence. Fever Dream blurs the line between his own desires and the reality of the crime itself as well as his unwilling entanglement in a public official’s political ambitions. As if the doctor weren’t tasked enough, he seems helpless as one colleague shuts him out for personal reasons while another is busy blazing a self-destructive path through Pittsburgh. The death threats meant to muddy the waters even more have the opposite effect on Rinaldi as he begins to see the pattern of how it all fits together.

Imagine what it must be like to have violent, aberrant behavior as the focus of your profession. Such is the case for Lyle Barnes in Night Terrors. Years of exposure to the worst individuals civilization has to offer has taken its toll on the veteran profiler in the form of the sleep disorder, night terrors. That he is also the focus of an assassin ups the stakes. Barnes disappears from protective custody before Rinaldi can begin to help him, complicating all of the above. As always, Rinaldi becomes more involved that he would like doing his best to help the mother of a killer she affirms is innocent—all evidence to the contrary.

These first three Rinaldi novels are so full of plots and characters that readers are kept busy indeed. Not only does Dr. Rinaldi have his hands full with patients in various stages of psychological health, he is finding his way back to a love life after years of mourning and is the go-to therapist for local and national law enforcement. What keeps me reading despite sometimes wanting a flow chart is that Rinaldi is a man we would all like to know. Despite conflict he is centered and innately positive. As a colleague, a friend, or a lover Rinaldi is a man to have on your side. Despite his often clouded vision or because of it, the doctor is immediately likable and one cares for him and for what happens to him. I look forward to the next Rinaldi novel, Phantom Limb (2014). I’m late to the party in reading these novels, but the party is still going on!

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