Customer Reviews

Death Trance: A Novel of Hypnotic Detection

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was a great mystery that I could honestly not put down until I finished it. And this is coming from someone who does not read very often because many books drag on and don't keep your attention. Solving the mystery through hypnosis is a great way to tell the story.

When reading the blurb for this book, I thought that making a detective out of a blind, paraplegic and attractive young woman had definite possibilities. (Jeffrey Deaver has created a fascinating quadriplegic detective in Lincoln Rhyme, eg). The character of Maddy Phillips is quite fascinating, though a little less exposition about her life, and the private island she has made her personal safe zone would have been nice.
The scenes in which she uses her skills as a hypnotherapist to gradually pull out her brother's memories, and solve the murder of his lover, are well written, if a bit implausible to me (perhaps I've read too much about why hypnotically-obtained testimony is verboten in US courts). But Maddy herself is a quite fascinating, if a bit mysterious character,and makes the book worth finishing. If I could, I would have given it 3 1/2, instead of 4 stars.