Irreparable Harm - Softcover

Gruenfeld, Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446600598 ISBN 13: 9780446600590

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 1994

Synopsis

Police captain Amanda Grant must try to prove that Pamela Jacoby, a young cop participating in complementary neuroses therapy, did not kill her therapy partner

About this title

From AudioFile

This extraordinary plot, with intrigue like Scott Turow's, involves a young policewoman, her psychiatrist, and her boss. The gripping suspense, like a Hitchcock movie, and riveting terror lend themselves very well to dramatization. Laural Merlington's resonant, wel-paced reading really adds to this heart-pounding story. Merlington easily uses accents and dialects to differentiate characters. Listeners are guaranteed not to guess the repressed secrets of the characters in this passionate, searching thriller. Gruenfeld's first novel will have listeners, as well as readers, requesting more. S.C.A. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews

Psychiatrist Brixton Ferrin attacks his patient Pamela Jacoby's crippling anxiety about men by fixing her up with Mackenzie Graham, another psychiatric patient with a complementary neurosis--he feels unbearable guilt after he was unwittingly conned into killing a man- -only to find the morning after an abortive date sends Pamela into a psychotic episode that Mac has been savagely murdered during the night. Wait, there's more. Pamela, whose revulsion from men (driving her to hours of tastefully detailed masturbation) stems from years of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, the late police officer Wild Bill Jacoby, has become a rookie cop herself, even though she hates the job, in order to live out Wild Bill's life and avenge his murder. So naturally the police chief, sensitive Capt. Amanda Grant, who doesn't want to seem any less idiotic than Dr. Ferrin, includes Pamela on the team investigating the murder even though mountains of evidence indicate that she must have killed Mac Graham. But there's also less- -much less--as endless days and chapters slip away, punctuated only by Pamela's suicide attempt and hysterical confession to the crime and the inevitable political firestorm (represented by one thinly imagined visit to Grant by the mayor), while Grant tracks down a screamingly obvious killer and a motive unobscured by any evocation of setting (the entire novel seems to take place on the undifferentiated space of the movie set that first-novelist Gruenfeld maybe yearns for) or memorable supporting characters (apart from the numbingly loyal investigating team and a few expert consultants, there's barely anybody, memorable or not, on call). Overslung and overwrought--with laughably crude sex, a mystery without a clue, and very little suspense. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0446600598
• ISBN 13: 9780446600590
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400