Cleo Goldwyn sees sexually dysfunctional patients in a dilapidated warehouse where an ancient elevator creaks past the clothing emporium specializing in sizes suitable for drag queens who anonymously shop there, bringing to Cleo's office confused, angry men, one of whom may be fatally flawed, a crazed killer. Venting his rage and fear of female therapists, he murders and mutilates. Does Cleo have him on her client list? Has he selected her as his next victim?
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Cloe Goldwin is a painter and a lesbian who lives among the macabre streetscapes of Manhattan's meat market district. She's also a female psychologist specializing in the treatment of sexual aberrations, which is of note since someone in the city is murdering female psychologists in a fashion that would get Hannibal Lector's approval. Then Cloe's good friend Annie disappears and her ex-husband receives a shipment of human fat in the mail. Could the cannibal-killer be one of Cloe's patients? Cloe decides to set herself up as a target in hope that there's still time to save Annie's life. The remainder of this novel cuts between scenes of the psychologist's dysfunctional life?even buying underwear seems to be too much for her?and her sessions with the seriously disturbed people who come to her for help. Although Jacovsky, herself a Manhattan artist and therapist, suggests that psychologists are natural detectives as they sift through their patients' secrets, she doesn't let readers in on the process. There's very little clue-gathering here, no thinking along with Cloe as she weighs the evidence, which can make readers feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, given the nature of the problems she's dealing with. Some of the plot developments are overly complicated and confusing, and Jacovsky's descriptions can be overwrought. Ultimately, this book fails, however, because Cloe is so difficult woman to like?but no more so than a novel that has the villain slicing off a piece of a woman's nipple and ear, then serving the former to himself, the latter to her, for dinner.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A debut thriller that portrays a Greenwich Village psychiatrist who comes into contact with a serial killer. Most Manhattan shrinks would probably not regard the meat-packing district as the best place to set up shop. Noisy by day, sleazy by night, and malodorous for most of the year, it is a zone of warehouses, after-hours joints, sex clubs, and the occasional chic restaurant bustling with transvestites. Small wonder, then, that most of Dr. Cleo Goldwins patients are looking for something more than Prozac. A specialist in sexual aberrations, Cleo spends most of her sessions talking to whores, johns, cross-dressers, or some combination of all three. Psychotherapy is an unnatural profession, Cleo admitsand it can also be a dangerous one. A particularly depraved killer is on the loose in New York just now, and he seems to favor preying on psychiatrists. Just about all of Cleos patients would look right at home in a police lineupWillie grew up in a lunatic asylum, Ben makes porn films, Anastase spent his childhood in a brothel where he and his mother worked shifts, Bernard is obsessed with the size of his penisand one of Cleos neighbors was murdered a few years back. Plus, a friend of hers has suddenly vanished without a trace, so youd think she would be on her guard. But Cleo isnt the sort who scares easily, despite the warnings of Detective Demson. She carries on with her motley crew, coaxing them as genially as Rikki Lake to tell her their stories, until one of them finally gives her a little more information than she wants to hear. By that time, its not a question of running the sessionits a matter of life or death. Annoyingly p.c. and pretentious: a largely dull story that picks up once the killer reveals himselfbut by then most readers will find that their interest has been killed off, too. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A taut thriller, brilliantly written. Colorful & complex.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Irregulars (Paperback)
Colorful and complex, Jacovsky has captured the jagged screamings of the human mind and from that cacophony has fashioned a brilliant fugue. Obviously drawing on her experience, Jacovsky mines the jagged terrain between normalcy and insanity and in her brilliant finale, comes to the conclusion that there may be little difference between each side of the couch. The often spare literary style somehow manages to convey wonderfully the underbelly of New York City at the turn of the millenium; pimps, prostitutes, sexual deviates, transexuals, transvestites, using it all as a metaphor for a mind, and perhaps a culture gone awry. Magnifcent in its conception, superb in its execution, this first novel by Jacovsky should be read by anyone who is compelled to examine the truth, however terrifying it may be.
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