Help Line : A Portia McTeague novel of suspense - Softcover

Sultan, Faye

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385485263 ISBN 13: 9780385485265

Publisher: Doubleday, 1999

Synopsis

When Tamara Meredith, a well-known psychic healer in Charlotte, North Carolina, is found stabbed to death and mutilated in her expensive uptown office, the whole city is obsessed with talk of the grisly details--everyone, that is, except for forensic psychologist Portia McTeague.

On leave from criminal work after testifying in a harrowing case of multiple murder, Portia is trying to concentrate on her private practice and volunteer counseling at the Help Line. But when the full-scale investigation team, at a loss for leads, makes a public appeal for help, Portia--oddly missing the very stresses from which she has purposely withdrawn--decides to volunteer her services and return to the media-filled, not to mention dangerous, life of forensic investigation.

When two more women in helping professions are murdered, Portia realizes that she's dealing with nothing less than a serial killer, someone with simultaneous needs to be caught and to outsmart the authorities. And as she tries to get inside his mind and determine his identity, she has no idea how close he may be or how cleverly he is manipulating her. In the end, before the killer is unmasked, Portia will be fighting for her life.

In Help Line, the authors follow their first Portia McTeague novel, Over the Line, with another engrossing psychological puzzle, and dramatize the emotionally and intellectually intense interaction between psychologist and client. It's a relationship that makes for gripping drama and page-turning suspense.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Praise for Over the Line:

"[A] taut psychological thriller--there are no easy answers in this novel, just complex characters, a gripping story and the promise of more cases (and complications) to come."
--Publishers Weekly

"This gripping novel puts the reader squarely into the witness box, offering insights and experiences known only to the experts who have been there."
--Colonel Robert K. Ressler, author of Whoever Fights Monsters and Justice Is Served

"Reads with a mixture of tense psychological terror and Southern charm--many lights will stay lit long into the night to find out how it all turns out."
--I Love a Mystery

"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."
--Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking

"A fascinating procedural of a capital trial."
--Nashville Tennessean

"The first in a series to captivate readers of detective and courtroom drama. For all popular fiction collections."
--Library Journal

About the Author

Faye Sultan, director of University Psychological Associates in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a forensic psychologist and a longtime veteran of the criminal courts. She has been called in to consult on some of the most high-profile murder cases in the country.

Teresa Kennedy, who lives in New York City, is a former book editor and a professional writer with more than thirty books to her credit.

Help Line is the authors' second Portia McTeague novel of suspense.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0385485263
• ISBN 13: 9780385485265
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272