Review: flat characters, little story
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 22, 2014
On one level, the basic premise was fine and could have been an interesting thriller, but the delivery of the story left much to be desired.  Most of the movement was delivered through dialogue without any nuances or mediating description, which created a very choppy, distant feeling.  The main character comes across as confused and obsessive, which made him hard to like, though it's clear we are supposed to be sympathetic towards him and his actions.  Perhaps most frustrating, the basic plot of the "mystery" was clear from very early on.  The exact reasoning behind the plot was the only thing that needed to be cleared up, and it was done quite abruptly, as was the ending itself.Perhaps the biggest problem was that John Sanders was difficult to accept as a psychologist, both in his musings about life and his clinical sessions.  He was pushy with the patient one-on-one (and I say patient in the singular because we never see him with another one, which could have fleshed out his character and attitudes a great deal), and mostly spouted textbook ideas in his group sessions, making it very difficult to envision him having much real impact.  The other patients are one-dimensional pieces of furniture populating the scenario, with no purpose other than to set the scene of a larger institution, and most of the staff are the same.  I probably would not have finished the book if I had not been laid up with a back injury, and as it is, I skimmed and skipped much of the last 25% just to get through it; I do feel as if I wasted my time reading this book, which seems much more like a first-draft that a finished piece of literature.