ATTENTION: SENSITIVE CONTENTS
TORTURED MEMORY
Brier Hospital Series
Book 4
by
Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.
- Series: Brier Hospital Series
- Paperback: 418 pages
- Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (February 23, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1482585200
- ISBN-13: 978-1482585209
(from book)
Dreams are the touchstones of our character
(Henry David Thoreau)
Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.
(Edgar Cayce)
Memory is often less about the truth
than about what we want it to be.
(David Halberstam)
SUMMARY
(from Goodreads)
Dr. Abbie Adler had
chosen general, child, and adolescent psychiatrist to treat sexually
abused girls. As a victim of such abuse herself, Abbie’s insights make
her an effective therapist. In addition, her practice includes adult
patients and provides group and individual therapy for a broad range of
psychiatric problems including depression, personality disorders,
psychopathy,and malignant narcissism.
On a December evening, the Berkeley Police find Abbie sitting in her car at Inspiration Point overlooking the East Bay of San Francisco. She’s bruised and catatonic. They transport her to Brier Hospital where they admit her to the psychiatric ward. The nature of her condition, and its cause, remain a mystery. After standard treatments fail, her psychiatrist recommends electroshock therapy. Finally, she awakens but remembers nothing of the month preceding. In addition, she discovers significant memory gaps from the past few years.
Abbie had been treating two victims of the Chabot rapist who targeted girls and as she’s making progress in their care, unbelievably, someone abducts and strangles them. Their deaths devastate Abbie.
During Abbie’s difficult recovery, memories of past events gradually return. They are fragmentary and torture her with memory flashes and nightmares. Gradually, she begins to suspect that one of her adult patients may be the strangler. When the police find Abbie’s prime suspect brutally murdered, both she and the police are befuddled. Abbie struggles to discover the
identity of the strangler and those who may be abetting his actions. Will he/they get away with it?
On a December evening, the Berkeley Police find Abbie sitting in her car at Inspiration Point overlooking the East Bay of San Francisco. She’s bruised and catatonic. They transport her to Brier Hospital where they admit her to the psychiatric ward. The nature of her condition, and its cause, remain a mystery. After standard treatments fail, her psychiatrist recommends electroshock therapy. Finally, she awakens but remembers nothing of the month preceding. In addition, she discovers significant memory gaps from the past few years.
Abbie had been treating two victims of the Chabot rapist who targeted girls and as she’s making progress in their care, unbelievably, someone abducts and strangles them. Their deaths devastate Abbie.
During Abbie’s difficult recovery, memories of past events gradually return. They are fragmentary and torture her with memory flashes and nightmares. Gradually, she begins to suspect that one of her adult patients may be the strangler. When the police find Abbie’s prime suspect brutally murdered, both she and the police are befuddled. Abbie struggles to discover the
identity of the strangler and those who may be abetting his actions. Will he/they get away with it?
AUTHOR
I was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, moved to Queens, and then, as New Yorkers say, we ascended to the Island.
After graduating from Valley Stream Central High School, I went to Adelphi, a college then, a university now, and then to medical school in Chicago.
The war in Vietnam interrupted my postgraduate training with a year in Colorado Springs and another as a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam. I spent seven months in the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry and five months in an evacuation hospital in Long Binh outside Saigon where I ran the emergency room.
I returned intact in 1968 to complete my training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney, nephrology.
I worked for twenty-three years in Berkeley, California in a hospital-based practice caring for patients with complicated illnesses often in ICU and served as Chief of Medicine.
My wife Dorlis and I retired in October 1995 and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge for a life at sea in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Four years later, exhausted from repairing everything on board, (often many times) we sold the sailboat and within a year took the lazy man's out; we bought a Nordic Tug, a trawler. We motored around Florida, the Bahamas, the entire East Coast and completed two 'Circle trips' to Canada and back, eight months, the first time, five months, the second.
I wrote professionally as a physician to inform but rarely to entertain, at least not on purpose.
First, Do No Harm was published in April 2007. No Cure for Murder was released in August 2011. For the Love of God was published in January 2012 and The Sixth Sense in July 2012.
In the last two years, I've written three screenplays based on my novels and hope to see one or more produced for the screen. I submitted my screenplay, Rage to the 80th Annual Writer's Digest contest and won honorable mention (57 out of 11,000).
We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 13 year old Mike, a terrier mix and Bennie, a 7 year old purebred though enormous Yorkie.
After graduating from Valley Stream Central High School, I went to Adelphi, a college then, a university now, and then to medical school in Chicago.
The war in Vietnam interrupted my postgraduate training with a year in Colorado Springs and another as a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam. I spent seven months in the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry and five months in an evacuation hospital in Long Binh outside Saigon where I ran the emergency room.
I returned intact in 1968 to complete my training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney, nephrology.
I worked for twenty-three years in Berkeley, California in a hospital-based practice caring for patients with complicated illnesses often in ICU and served as Chief of Medicine.
My wife Dorlis and I retired in October 1995 and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge for a life at sea in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Four years later, exhausted from repairing everything on board, (often many times) we sold the sailboat and within a year took the lazy man's out; we bought a Nordic Tug, a trawler. We motored around Florida, the Bahamas, the entire East Coast and completed two 'Circle trips' to Canada and back, eight months, the first time, five months, the second.
I wrote professionally as a physician to inform but rarely to entertain, at least not on purpose.
First, Do No Harm was published in April 2007. No Cure for Murder was released in August 2011. For the Love of God was published in January 2012 and The Sixth Sense in July 2012.
In the last two years, I've written three screenplays based on my novels and hope to see one or more produced for the screen. I submitted my screenplay, Rage to the 80th Annual Writer's Digest contest and won honorable mention (57 out of 11,000).
We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 13 year old Mike, a terrier mix and Bennie, a 7 year old purebred though enormous Yorkie.
REVIEW
This book has some very sensitive topics but sometimes these topics need to be addressed. The author wrote a wonderful crime thriller that kept you on your toes every minute. I couldn't put the book down. It just kept those pages turning and turning.
Abbie Adler, the psychiatrist in the book and the main character was very realistic and you just had to like her. My problem with her was, why did she keep going on with these clients who totally didn't want her help, they were playing games. They didn't give her all the information she needed. I think she was just too good for her own good. Maybe she was trying to help someone who had gone through what she had. Hoping that it wouldn't happen again. That to me is unrealistic. It has happened for years and will continue to happen. There are those people out there that are either sick, demented or just get off by these horrible acts. Some don't want help. Some take the help but don't improve. The characters seemed to click together. There was this bond between some of them.
The ending was nothing like I expected. I was truly surprised and amazed. Another good Brier Hospital Series book.
I was given a complimentary copy of this book from the author, Lawrence W. Gold, M.D. for my view of the book.
I would give this book 5 STARS.
LINKS
http://bemiown.blogspot.com
bemiown@yahoo.com
www.lawrencegoldmd.com
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/982142271
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2F3BMZNLIVZJ5/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482585200
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