The Strange Case of Dr. Simmonds and Dr. Glas: A Novel
by Dannie Abse
Category: Deception

"Dr. Simmonds, a well-established general practitioner in London's Swiss Cottage, finds himself ministering more and more in the postwar 1950s to the ills of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who have settled thickly in his old neighborhood. He also finds himself irresistibly drawn into an increasingly troubling fantasy life by Yvonne Bloomberg, the attractive young wife of one of his more, to him, execrable patients." "Repelled as he is by Anton Bloomberg's "running nose, his wheezing chest, the rust in his pelvis, the Christmas alcohol in his liver, the Scrooge in his soul," Simmonds can imagine only the repugnance the pretty, vulnerable Yvonne must feel at her husband's proprietary touch. It's when she sends Simmonds a copy of Dr. Glas, a novel about a doctor who colludes with a patient in the murder of her spouse, that the boundaries between reality and fantasy begin to blur, and Simmonds begins to act upon impulses rising from a darker, undoctorly side of his nature." "Blind to the prejudices that blind him, Simmonds unwittingly reveals in the disquieting pages of his journals the rancor he harbors in his soul as he sets out on a course that withholds its full horror until the very end."--BOOK JACKET.