Customer Reviews

Risk Factor

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Like so many of us today, and especially those of us who have children, we become numb by media reports of youth violence. Although we strive to understand its' ramifications, we become overwhelmed, and at some point many of us tune out. Albeit a novel, RISK FACTOR explores the concept of nature vs. nurture further exploring why children turn to violence. It was refreshing for me to be able to enjoy myself throughout this read (it's quite thrilling and scary), while gaining a better understanding of this ugly phenomenon without media opinion and hype. Last, I felt restored; although Molly is a fictional character, I know that there are Molly's in this world - people who care about children.

Against the noisy, violent frenzy of emergency room psychiatric admissions, Atkins' second psychological/medical thriller explores the world of children who kill.

The book begins with the murder of a nurse on the juvenile psychiatric inpatient ward. A previously gentle schizophrenic boy has gone catatonic beside the body, bloody knife clutched in his hand. His assigned doctor, Molly Katz, a senior psychiatric resident, former nurse and single mother of two, struggles to understand, going so far as to get a night job at the prison hospital where the boy has been transferred.

Although the writing is sometimes clunky, Atkins knows his dangerous kids. Confrontations with angry, unpredictable children who recognize absolutely no authority and respond to no threat or incentive, ratchet up the tension more than any number of murders. Are they born or made?

Atkins does his best to build to an explosive climax but for most readers it's the hospital atmosphere and the ever-present buzz of background violence that will claim their attention.

I purchased this book after reading a review of it in our Sunday paper. Being a teacher, I was interested in how it described troubled children, and the "making" of troubled children, from a psychiatrist's point of view. The book was all I hoped for, and more. Besides gaining insightful, factual information, I was thoroughly absorbed in the plot as it unfolded. I, too, could not put this down when I neared the end. Now I am looking forward to reading his first book, "The Portrait."

Fascinating look at the psychological issues facing our youth today, gives you much to think about. Discusses origin and responsibility - but is all tied to a fantastic tale. Author obviously knows his topic and has been on the inside of HMO battles, broken families, and hopeless feelings about treating kids whose societies and families have failed them...as well as treating those kids who might just be "born bad" - I felt I arrived at a new understanding about an important social issue at the same time as being riveted by a spectacular read! You'll love it if you are in the mental health field, if you are a parent, if you are a resident, or if you just love a good mystery! My highest praise!

What a thriller! The book has it all. Intrigue, mystery, suspense! I picked up the book and did nothing until I finished it. Twist ending. I would love to see this made into a movie.

At the inpatient adolescent unit of Boston's Commonwealth Hospital, a young schizophrenic man sits next to the corpse of Nurse Helen Weir. Blood-soaked and incoherent, Garrett is unable to give any clues in his own defense that make sense to the doctors or those investigating the case. When a second nurse is murdered, Dr. Molly Katz has serious doubts about Garrett's guilt. As Molly seeks to protect Garrett and unlock the key to his worsening condition, she must turn to her knowledge of psychology to look beneath the more obvious clues. Her work with other cases, particularly Jennifer Ryan, a young girl at extreme odds with her mother, leads her into an examination of the balance between the nature versus nurture debate. Why is there a difference between normal adolescent psychology and the increasing extreme levels of adolescent behavior? Why do some adolescents, like her children, manifest similar periods of emotion and rebellion without surpassing a level of violence and psychological illness that she sees in her patients? As Molly delves deeper into these questions while trying to protect Garrett, a killer shadows her and her family. Can she solve the riddle of Garrett's mind before it is too late?

RISK FACTOR is a refreshingly unusual thriller. As Molly looks into her cases, comparing the extreme manifestations of her patients to similar though less extreme adolescent moments she sees as a mother, she addresses the questions without the kind of black and white dividing lines between warring psychological camps that one often sees in the media whenever an extreme case surfaces. Her patients are not monsters but neither does she excuse their behavior. Molly has the ability to view the family as a whole rather than merely exonerating or blaming the child or the parent. Molly's quest to reach Garrett takes her into all the pertinent issues of nature versus nurture as well as the changes in society that seem to exacerbate the extreme levels of behavior. No stone is left unturned. No easy answer is given. Instead, Molly's ability to examine the amalgamation of the separate psychological factors leads her to uncover clues the police are unable to see.

RISK FACTOR is not the typical terrifying cookie cutter psychological thriller that sensationalizes the most twisted horrifying crime into an almost horror-like scenario with a resolution that reads almost like a simplistic exaggerated caricature. RISK FACTOR is indeed a psychological thriller with its haunting portrait of adolescence. Several twists and turns lead to an unexpected resolution to the murder case, but the drawing power of this thriller is the haunting web of intricate psychological threads. Through fiction, RISK FACTOR addresses some of the vital questions we all ask in attempts to prevent incidents like Columbine or any of the other escalating scenarios we see in today's media compared to that of earlier generations. Psychiatrist Charles Atkins has a gift of being able to examine these issues through fiction in a way that does not oversimplify nor resort to the language of a psychological treatise or diagnostic manual. RISK FACTOR has a certain element of creepiness, but presented in a more subtle way that I appreciated as a reader. I found myself drawn more and more into this book precisely for the combination of the fictional lightness of a thriller (as compared to non-fiction) with just the right amount of depth to keep me intrigued. Intellectually I found RISK FACTOR even creepier at the end when I thought over what I had just read. I have not read this author before this book but I will definitely be reading more by him in the future. In RISK FACTOR, Charles Atkins puts the psychological back into the psychological thriller.

Almost forty year old Dr. Molly Katz, single mother of teenagers Josh and Megan, is a third-year resident physician on the psychiatric ward of Boston Commonwealth Hospital. She is shocked and distraught when one of her patients, fifteen years old Garret Jacobs confesses to viciously slaughtering a nurse with a knife. Molly had talked with Garret when he was committed last week with a psychotic diagnosis, but he displayed no violent tendencies. She wonders how she failed to notice his aggression.

However, the obvious closed case for the police that is and not the psychiatric student takes a bizarre twist when a second nurse is brutally bludgeoned to death while Garret is comatose. As she meets with her young patients who run the gamut of mental and emotional issues including violence towards those who love them, Molly increasingly is grateful to God that her two teens seem normal.

This exciting medical thriller focuses on the nature vs. nurture psychology debate; as Dr. Katz and other professionals mesmerize the audience with the discussions re kids and violence, and the probability diagnosis of future behavior. Another sidebar bewailing the failed health of the insurance system seems a bit forced. Fans will relish this tense tale especially with a shocking twist as Dr. Charles Atkins provides a deep PORTRAIT of teen violent crime with this taut psychological drama.

Harriet Klausner

This book is billed as a pyschological thriller. It certainly is psychological and psychiatric. I was not gripped by the book to the extent that I could not put it down. By the time, the killer was revealed, the thrill was gone. The book is full of psychiatric lingo. The reader, who is not familiar with the language might be left in the dark. Then there is the issue of medication. Now how many people really know what risperal is? And you the issue of the labeling of people. For example, my diagnosis was described as "she was trapped between overwhelming emotions and a profound sense of emptiness." Basically, the book consists of Molly Katz trying to make sense of the baby sociopaths of the world. Are they born that way or was there some sort of event that brought them to that point? The book offers the reader a window into world of adolescent mental illness.