Denial

Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an aesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can't free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path.

As Denial opens, all of Clevenger's understanding and expertise are put to the test: He has been asked to rubber-stamp the mental competence of a homeless schizophrenic who has confessed to a particularly grisly murder. As evidence of a shocking series of murders begins to mount, Clevenger will be forced to confront his own most terrifying and powerful demons.

Keith Ablow is a forensic psychiatrist who has worked with violent, severely mentally ill and drug-dependent men and women from every level of society. His clients range from those who are homeless or imprisoned to executives of large corporations to members of law enforcement and government. His view of the world in which we live -- that all of us suffer, that none of us is born evil, and that each of us must be helped to confront the truth about our lives -- is central to his therapeutic approach with patients and his writing.

Ablow was raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brown University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. While a medical student, he worked as a reporter for Newsweek magazine, a freelance writer for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, and a medical editor for Lifetime Medical Television in Los Angeles. His first book was a guide to winning admission to medical school and preserving one's humanity during the four grueling years that follow.

After Johns Hopkins, Ablow returned to the Boston area for a psychiatry residence at Tufts/New England Medical Center hospitals. He continued to write about psychiatry and social issues for national publications, including US News & World Report and USA Today, and he authored three more books for the general public:How to Cope with Depression, To Wrestle with Demons, and Anatomy of a Psychiatric Illness -- each of them an attempt to share his deeply held belief that empathy, if properly harnessed, can heal illness.

In 1990, Ablow's close friend and fellow resident of psychiatry was murdered. This tragedy prompted the author to write Without Mercy, a true crime study examining the killer's life and the use of the insanity defense at his trial.
After residency, Dr. Ablow served as Medical Director of Tri-City Mental Health Centers, one of the country's oldest networks of community mental health clinics. He also served as medical director of Heritage Health Systems, a state-wide spectrum of medical, psychiatric and addiction facilities.
        
Today, Ablow lives in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a tiny city on the Mystic River, just outside Boston. In addition to treating patients, he is the on-camera psychiatry consultant for WHDH TV (the Boston NBC affiliate) and a frequent expert witness in legal cases involving trauma and violence.