Over the Line - Hardcover

Faye Sultan; Teresa Kennedy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385485255 ISBN 13: 9780385485258

Publisher: Doubleday, 1997

Synopsis

Portia knew from experience that all the passions look alike--love and hate, fear and rage, envy and helpless need...Jimmy Wier was charged with a total of three counts of murder, all elderly women...Blood found on his clothes matched that of two of the victims, and he was also found in possession of some jewelry and an African violet plant taken from one of them.  Portia would have to try to discover what had gone on in his mind, and to put those findings before a jury...She had taken Jimmy's case because inside the twisted workings of his mind and soul was something she needed to know--and she wanted to ask him about the African violet...

Portia McTeague is a forensic psychologist, called in by the defense to examine Jimmy Wier, who is charged with two brutal murders that have shocked a sleepy Southern town.  A politically ambitious--and morally corrupt--district attorney is determined to get the death penalty, and the accused is unwilling--or unable--to talk, even to save his own life.

Portia is burnt-out--tired of being beaten up by prosecutors on the stand, tired of seeing her clients die despite her best efforts, and tired of fighting her own demons.  But she agrees to see Jimmy, and is immediately both seduced and repelled by his craziness.  What is it that has made Jimmy Wier cross that fine line that divides sanity from madness?

The more Portia is able to discover about Jimmy's past, the better she is able to understand his pain, until, finally, the last piece of the intricate and ugly puzzle that is "Jimmy the Weird" falls startlingly into place, and the reasons for his actions become immediately clear.

Once you have begun the journey with Portia McTeague deep into the mind of this murderer, you will find it as impossible as she does to draw away from his compelling psychosis.

About this title

Review

"She met Portia's eyes, and in that moment there passed between the two women a silent understanding. For Portia realized all over again what she had seen the first time they'd ever laid eyes on one another ... behind the efficient, almost robotic exterior of Amy Goodsnow, she too was a member of the club--the club whose members understood like no one else could all of the terrible things that can happen to children." That combination of chilling honesty and obvious insider knowledge of the darker areas of human behavior energizes every page of this thriller about forensic psychologist Portia McTeague. Faye Sultan, who has been involved in just such a role in many high-profile murder cases, and her cowriter, novelist Teresa Kennedy, used a notorious double murder in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the basis for their story. It raises a troubling question: just how crazy does a person have to be to keep a jury from sentencing him to death? There's little doubt that a hulking handyman named Jimmy Weir savagely killed two elderly women, but when a hotshot district attorney demands the death penalty, McTeague has to dig so deeply into the depths of Weir's tormented mind that her own hard-won mental equilibrium is seriously challenged.

From the Publisher

Advance Praise for Over the Line:

"I like books that take you into a realm of experience you normally wouldn't have. Over the Line not only takes you into the inner world of a man who commits an unspeakable crime, but also into the fragile domain of the forensic psychologist who tries to help him. This is a murder mystery of a special sort. Not a who-done-it but a why-he-done-it,
and why his professional expert will never be the same again after she gets involved in trying to help him."
--Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385485255
• ISBN 13: 9780385485258
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320