Best Mystery Novel, Red Adept Annual Indie Awards 2010
Argus Ward is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who runs a protection agency catering to the rich and famous. His best-kept secret--which he shares with lawyers, doctors and even psychiatrists--is his status as a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic. One day, with little warning, he turns psychotic for the first time in twenty years. He lands in a secure psychiatric facility, charged with the murder of his most famous client, high tech industry billionaire John Helms, the wealthiest man in America.
Argus has no memory of the killing. A blood test suggests to him that some unknown enemy had switched his anti-psychotic medication with identical-looking dummy pills to purposely drive him insane.
A sign of lingering paranoia? His doctor thinks so. Even his wife.
Yet Argus escapes incarceration to prove his theory. With the law on his trail and a ticking time bomb in his head--due to a lack of medication--he discovers that his disease had been "weaponized" by a powerful group to secretly assassinate John Helms as part of a multiple assassination conspiracy of world-wide significance.
Or has Argus simply lost his mind again? What in the end is "real" and what is only imagination in his story?
And what is justice for the criminally insane?
Come lose your grip on reality. Read CRACK-UP.
Argus Ward is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who runs a protection agency catering to the rich and famous. His best-kept secret--which he shares with lawyers, doctors and even psychiatrists--is his status as a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic. One day, with little warning, he turns psychotic for the first time in twenty years. He lands in a secure psychiatric facility, charged with the murder of his most famous client, high tech industry billionaire John Helms, the wealthiest man in America.
Argus has no memory of the killing. A blood test suggests to him that some unknown enemy had switched his anti-psychotic medication with identical-looking dummy pills to purposely drive him insane.
A sign of lingering paranoia? His doctor thinks so. Even his wife.
Yet Argus escapes incarceration to prove his theory. With the law on his trail and a ticking time bomb in his head--due to a lack of medication--he discovers that his disease had been "weaponized" by a powerful group to secretly assassinate John Helms as part of a multiple assassination conspiracy of world-wide significance.
Or has Argus simply lost his mind again? What in the end is "real" and what is only imagination in his story?
And what is justice for the criminally insane?
Come lose your grip on reality. Read CRACK-UP.
79,000 words (316 standard pages)
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Also by Eric Christopherson: THE PROPHET MOTIVE
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Also by Eric Christopherson: THE PROPHET MOTIVE
Red Adept Reviews Indie Award for Thrillers/Suspense, 2011
San Francisco police detective John Richetti infiltrates a bizarre cult on the trail of two murder suspects. But a series of sophisticated brainwashing techniques pushes him beyond the breaking point ...
San Francisco police detective John Richetti infiltrates a bizarre cult on the trail of two murder suspects. But a series of sophisticated brainwashing techniques pushes him beyond the breaking point ...
