Phantom Limb

July 14, 2014
At the start of Palumbo’s twisty fourth Daniel Rinaldi mystery (after 2013’s Night Terrors), the psychologist, who consults for the Pittsburgh PD, receives a visitor one afternoon he last saw posing in Playboy almost 30 years earlier. Lisa Campbell, ex-starlet and current trophy wife to elderly, wheelchair-bound tycoon Charles Harland, plans to kill herself at 7 o’clock that evening. Daniel has only 50 minutes to talk her out of it. Soon after Lisa leaves his office, the police inform him that she’s been kidnapped. As a doctor who may have heard critical information that he’s ethically bound by confidentiality not to share, Daniel is in tricky position as he seeks to help the Harland family and the police get Lisa back. He serves as the perfect point of view character, central to the action without needing to clamor for attention. Daniel’s personal story continues to evolve in this satisfying entry, which ends on a cliffhanger.

August 1, 2014

Attempting to keep his new patient local Hollywood washout Lisa Harland from committing suicide, psychologist Daniel Rinaldi gets drawn into a ransom delivery when she is kidnapped outside his office. Dealing with secrets and suspicious characters in the Harland family, Daniel must discover Lisa's whereabouts before she dies. Rinaldi's fourth investigation (after Night Terrors) pits him against a brilliant killer.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
Amputees say a missing arm or leg can itch and demand to be scratched, as though it were still there. That's a phantom limb, and its ghostly presence is one of the keys to this lively novel. The premise is conventional enough: a has-been film star, married to a gazillionaire coot, is kidnapped. The stock characters are present: the old boy's bitter, boozy son; officious police and feds; a woman cop who chafes at not being taken seriously; and even the hero, the penetratingly analytical psychologist Daniel Rinaldi. A minor figure, who lost a leg in Afghanistan, waits in the wings as the plot races to its conclusion. But after the kidnap drama ends, there are about 170 pages to go. What follows is a reexamination of the evidence, when the phantom limb makes its nonpresence known. Could it be that the kidnap-ransom plot was really about something else? We're on the psychologist's turf now, and the revelations are more interesting than the author's attempt to turn this into an actioner. It's about fragmented people's attempts to be whole.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)