Customer Reviews

The Practice of Deceit: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Definitely a "couldn't put it down," with wonderful characters. Eric, the unsuspecting and deeply sympathetic psychotherapist protagonist, is particularly memorable, and I continue to think about him and the book long after finishing it. And Coleen, the lawyer-predator wife is fascinating and sympathetic in her own way--I found myself admiring her organizational skills and high functioning at the same time one is chilled by her horrific behavior. A complex, smart, thoughtful (and ultimately poignant) book drenched with psychological and social insight. Read it just to find out how they live in the beautiful houses of Scarsdale.

We know almost from the outset of his story that Eric Lavender's marriage is in trouble. He is, after all, telling that story from a holding cell in the Scarsdale Police Department, and it's a complaint from Eric's wife that's landed him there. But only a few weeks earlier Eric had been obliviously happy in his three-and-a-half-year marriage to Colleen, a divorce attorney known to her colleagues--if not her husband--as a barracuda when it comes to extracting blood from her clients' exes. Colleen's opening shot in a battle Eric had only dimly been aware was brewing is the police report she's filed alleging that Eric sexually molested his stepdaughter, Colleen's four-year-old from a previous relationship. Sitting on the hard bench in his cell with time on his hands, Eric begins to explain how things fell apart for him, a tale whose roots go back to the day he met Colleen. Four years earlier, still recovering from the emotional trauma of being abandoned by her husband while she was pregnant, Colleen boldly took the lead in wooing and winning Eric. In less than a year he'd left behind his apartment and his psychotherapy practice in New York and moved into her Scarsdale home, where he set about talking the community's pampered scions through their relatively uninteresting problems.

The trouble in their marriage starts when the wife of one of Eric's patients hires Colleen as a divorce lawyer. Colleen's hostile behavior when confronted with the problem of this conflict of interest--she and Eric are now ranged on either side of a domestic dispute--prompts Eric to take a closer look at the enigmatic woman he's married to. He gradually uncovers evidence that suggests she has been less than truthful to him about her background. The story of Eric's relationship with Colleen becomes mesmerizing as he slowly peels back the layers of his wife's perfidy, discovering as he does that he hardly knows her, that he cannot trust the woman who, chillingly, is now, as he's telling the story, acting as sole parent to their daughters.

Elizabeth Benedict's The Practice of Deceit is one of those rare books one is loath to see the end of. Smoothly written and well plotted, the book manages to be both quiet and suspenseful. I would have preferred that the final chapter of the book not be epistolary in form, and there is one action taken by the protagonist that continues to confuse me (his call to a client while in prison), but these are minor quibbles about a very good book.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

If an experienced clinical psychologist cannot see through an elaborate charade constructed by a femme fatale, where does that leave the rest of us mortals. Eric Lavender, a mid-forties bachelor from New York, is in LA attending to the death of his father, when Colleen Golden, a divorce attorney from Scarsdale, NY, who just happens to be staying at the same upscale hotel as Eric, begins a subtle but very successful pursuit of him. Eric allows her vague claims of victim hood to temper his questions about her past, especially in light of her exquisite appearance.

Eric marries Colleen and her daughter Zoe after an "accidental" baby is on the way, but she continues to be for Eric "unknowable." He does know that she has co-authored a successful book on divorce and has a successful practice. But Colleen makes a series of mistakes. First, she unknowingly becomes the divorce lawyer for the wife of one of Eric's patients in which exaggerated claims are made. Then, despite the conflict of interest, she belligerently refuses to step aside in the case. Earlier doubts about Colleen are now resurfaced with Eric.

Eric, from a Scarsdale jail cell, put there by a false accusation by Colleen, looks back on all of the little deceptions that have made his life with Colleen mostly a lie and put him in serious jeopardy. This aspect of the book is very interesting and suspenseful, watching Eric continually ignore his encounters with Colleen's trickery.

"Deceit" flows better than "Almost," Benedict's previous novel, (there is a discernible plot) but is similar in that it is an exploration of our ability to understand relationships. "Deceit" does lose a little steam towards the end as the deceit is played out. The book is entertaining and thought provoking.

I was captivated from the first page through the last. The book is by turns painfully funny and piercingly perceptive. I was caught up as the intoxication of first infatuation led to the chaos of marriage with children, and finally to gripping plot twists.
Benedict writes great sentences and paragraphs, the chapter titles were wonderfully ironic, the skewering of swanky suburbia was subtle and delicious, and the insights into the mysteriies of intimate relationships were bracing.
So...lots of fun, very smart, a page turner. I wished it wouldn't end so I could keep on reading it.

The Practice of Deceit, a quite mesmerizing look at sex, lies, and infidelity, is a suspenseful tale as seen through the eyes of an ordinary man. Eric Lavender is an intelligent, affable New York psychotherapist who has been around the block a few times. He's now in his mid-forties, and has never been married; there have been plenty of girlfriends, but there's something about the freedom of bachelorhood that has kept Eric single and fancy-free.

Eric's calm, steady, and somewhat predictable life is suddenly interrupted when he gets a call that his father has passed away in Los Angeles. While in the city attending to the estate and tying up the loose ends for a father that he knew never really loved him, Eric meets the stunning and crafty Colleen. Colleen is a lawyer, who specializes in obtaining divorces for women; she's divorced herself but has a baby daughter from a previous marriage.

Immediately attracted to her mixture of vulnerability and professional toughness, Eric begins to entertain the idea of finally having a family with her. While Colleen is busy running her law firm in Scarsdale, New York, Eric returns to Manhattan to his practice. When Colleen suddenly announces she is pregnant, he dives right in and decides to make a go of marriage and family life.

Things go smoothly, at first, with the birth of their daughter, and with Eric's relocation to the Scarsdale, the suburbs of the upper middle class, where he makes money talking to bored and wealthy housewives. Colleen seems to be the perfect wife and mother; she's kind and attentive, and she even has the small cottage at the back of the house renovated into a plush and luxurious office for Eric.

But everything is soon about to turn when Eric begins to question his wife's ethics involving Sandy Lefkowitz, a client that they have in common. Colleen seems to be a woman of an enigmatic past, and as Eric looks closer, he begins to see that all is not right with his wife. There's secrets she's been hiding, and lies she's been telling; even Pru, his loyal sister and Bea her long term partner, think that Colleen seems "unknowable."

Suddenly, the carefully woven life that Eric has assembled falls away and he is forced to account for a history of naivety. Colleen is soon revealed as almost sociopathic, a man hater whose real life with all its scratches and dents was underway, "like the rest of us at forty or forty five, she was something of a used book: intact but a bit battered around the edges." Falling deep into a swamp of ambiguities and clouded obligations, Eric's life becomes a nightmare as Colleen is intent on protecting her shady past, a past defined by poverty and lies.

Deeply embarrassed and distraught, with is wife closing in on him, Eric has come to the moment of truth; whether he can stay in a marriage that is not based on "in sickness and in health, but in truth and in treachery." Eric must turn from a strong man banging a drum in the woods, the frightened, feminized commitment phobe he sees every day in the mirror, to battling a woman where the court system was her favorite way to communicate in both her professional and personal life.

Author, Elizabeth Benedict has a firm grasp of her characters, their flaws, and their fears. In this heightened novel, all are forced to confront their pretensions, insecurities and motivations. Colleen's existence is defined by lies, denial and deceit as she steadily uses her feminine and professional wiles to dominate Eric. While Eric, the "confirmed bachelor" is fooled into a marriage that is not as it first seemed. He's a man who thinks about his concessions and sacrifices, and that his grudging submission to contentment, has somehow rendered him immune to the pitfalls of those he treats, his surprise at having it all turned on him is made that much more convincing.

In the end, The Practice of Deceit is an absolutely scathing portrait of unhappy, scared, and lonely people stuck in their expensive houses, and in their loveless marriages. They're devoted to their kids, but desperate for a grown-up's kiss, a grown-up's body to hold in the night. The serpentine plot and the machiavellian conceit of Colleen, the novel's female protagonist, ensure that the story remains a profoundly realistic excursion into the havoc a woman can wreak if holding the right amount of power. Mike Leonard September 05.

This is suspense, not mystery-no body. It is an unusual and intriguing story that involved me at the first page and I read straight through. It wasn't as suspenseful as I'd have hoped in that the deceit unraveled fairly quickly. But it was very well written in the first person with humor and introspection from interesting and fully dimensional protagonist.

This is the best novel I've read in ages and I read lots of them. It's smart, witty, and fast-paced. A psychological thriller that asks the question, "What are ordinary folks supposed to do when confronted with pure evil?" I read the book straight through. Elizabeth Benedict is a sylish and agile writer.
Judith Hillman Paterson
author of "Sweet Mystery: A Book of Remembering"

Six years ago, out in California, Eric Lavender was despondent over the death of his father. By chance he meets Colleen O'Brien and her baby girl, Zoe. Once back home in New York, they quickly become a couple, and he moves out to suburbs to be with them. Colleen finds out she is pregnant, and Eric hesitantly asks her to marry him. Their married life is idyllic and typically crazed; both having careers, and raising two little girls. Eric is a renowned psychologist, who recently made headlines in a police rescue operation. Colleen is a high-powered divorce attorney. A major conflict erupts in their lives, when Eric takes on a new patient whose wife has thrown him out of the house and has demanded a divorce. Eric finds out that Colleen is representing her. Colleen refuses to listen to Eric's reasons that she has to drop the case as well. Eric is taken aback to learn of his wife's reputation and starts to research her background more thoroughly. Once Colleen discovers that Eric is investigating her past, she drops a bombshell accusation on him and has him arrested. His sister Pru and her life partner Bea come to his rescue. Eric writes the entire novel in the first person, in essence a letter to his wife. His quirky sense of humor is on display by the chapter headlines. The Practice of Deceit is a well-written story of love, deception, family, and redemption.

Just finished, and while I'll admit I wanted to keep going, I was astonished that the main character was taken in. I knew nothing about the book before I read it, so I didn't know who was the bad guy or what was going to happen, but I figured out something was amiss with one of the characters really early on. And that a psychologist was taken in... And then did things that allowed his suspicions to be noticed by a crazy person so that crazy person could take revenge? (Trying for no spoilers here.) So for most of the book I was snorting "Of Course!" at the character and rolling my eyes at his stupidity. Plus the author explains everything at least three times, like we're going to forget what just happened. That alone makes me nuts. Give the reader some credit.
As a further note, there is a scene near the beginning that I thought was completely unbelievable. I am open minded about what people choose to do in the privacy etc.... but that struck me as not only absurd, but a huge red flag about the characters... (Again, trying for no spoilers.)

I think it would have been much MORE interesting if written from the wife's perspective. She would have been able to show us the tension of such a life and the fear of being found out.

Now let me tell you how I came to read this book. A person who claimed to be the author contacted me by email. They stated they had read a couple of my reviews (on Dean Koontz books, which were rather harsh, I may add) and thought that I would enjoy this book. It was something of a challenge, I guess. One of those "my book is better than their book" claims. In this case, they were right; although the books I was comparing this novel to were a couple of the worst books I have attempted to read in the last few years. So, short of being garbage, this book was bound to win the challenge, and it did...

...it just didn't win by much...