Blind and reclusive hypnotherapist Maddy Phillips relies on the help of her brother and prime hypnotic subject to uncover the family facts involved in the murder of a hated stepmother. By the author of Death Trance. Reprint. K. PW.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Amateur sleuth Alex Phillips and his sister Maddy, a blind, crippled hypnotist/psychologist living as a wealthy recluse on an island in Michigan, make a riveting return from their debut in Death Trance . Here they investigate a murder involving one of Maddy's former patients in Chicago. In a series of hypnosis-induced flashbacks--following a bloody opening scene in medias res --Alex tells Maddy about what happened when he went to Chicago to see her ex-patient Loretta, who had recently written to Maddy for help. After several meetings with Loretta and her family, Alex is shocked to find Loretta's hated stepmother dead and Loretta holding what may be the murder knife and eager to confess to the killing. Listening to Alex's hypnosis-induced accounts of harrowing events before the murder, Maddy halts the action like a film director, probing his memory for clues. A further complication surfaces: an unidentified member of Loretta's family was driving the car that killed a little girl, whose father had been another patient of Maddy's. Zimmerman's risks largely pay off: that most of this tale has a distant, deja-vu quality doesn't detract at all from the narrative momentum, which is further accelerated by accruing family secrets that finally trigger the story's startling resolution on Maddy's island. Mystery Guild selection; pa per back rights to Dell.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
When she gets a letter from her agoraphobic former patient Loretta Long begging for help in ``a matter of life and death,'' blind, paraplegic hypnotist/psychologist Maddy Phillips (Death Trance, 1992) sends her brother Alex to Chicago to help Loretta. Alex is too late to prevent the murder of Loretta's stepmother, Helen, and Loretta's confession to the police, but his hypnosis-induced memories of his nightmarish visit--most of the novel is a series of shrill flashbacks--help untangle the web of relationships among Loretta, her runaway alcoholic brother Billy, his twin Carol Marie, and Ray Preston, another patient Maddy had been treating for depression after his daughter was killed in a car accident. Zimmerman's tight focus on a tiny cast--whose shifting positions seem to be refracted through a kaleidoscope--comes across like Ruth Rendell on uppers after a sleepless night. The sustained note of hysteria keeps your blood pumping while preventing you from taking any of it seriously. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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