Fever Dream

September 12, 2011
In Palumbo’s exciting second mystery featuring Pittsburgh psychologist Daniel Rinaldi (after 2010’s Mirror Image), the police bring in Daniel as a trauma expert to care for Treva Williams, the sole survivor of a bank robbery hostage situation gone bad. Though she’s clearly traumatized, Treva has her own secrets, including a former relationship with a cop, another with an abusive thug, and a string of questionable choices. As the center of a messy crime with high stakes, Treva appears to be a link between several unrelated events tainting district attorney Leland Sinclair, who’s running for governor of Pennsylvania. When the governor’s race heats up, Daniel is thrown into a dangerous mix of political intrigue, murder, manipulation, and explosive revelations that could rock Pittsburgh. Palumbo takes the reader into the seamy side of the Steel City, chock-full of corruption and crime, love and loss.

October 15, 2011
Clinical psychologist Daniel Rinaldi gets yanked out of a session with a patient and onto a smoking-hot trail of dirty money, dirtier politicians and wholesale killing. At the first sign of trouble, one of the two robbers who'd stormed into Pittsburgh's First Allegheny Bank turns tail and flees. The other one executes assistant manager Bobby Marks, who doesn't stay quite still enough; frees Bobby's girlfriend, bank officer Treva Williams; keeps three more hostages inside; and begins issuing demands. That's when Det. Eleanor Lowrey phones Dr. Rinaldi, whom she's worked with before (Mirror Image, 2010, etc.), and demands that he high-tail it downtown and interview the traumatized Treva before things get worse. Rinaldi does his best, but things get worse anyway, and the robber, stealing a page from the Hannibal Lecter playbook, makes a clean getaway. The robbery-turned-murder is only the beginning of a crime spree that will seriously complicate D.A. Leland Sinclair's gubernatorial bid, make Rinaldi wonder whether Post-Gazette reporter Sam Weiss is indeed correct that Sinclair is in attorney Evan McCloskey's pocket, and produce a collateral-damage casualty list worthy of a high-stakes actioner. There's no need for Palumbo to dial down the suspense while Rinaldi goes looking for suspects, since they keep coming at him in waves. Through it all, this unlikely hero, even when he's abducted and threatened with death, keeps his cool, keeps his edge and never backs down from either the bad guys or his alleged allies, as if he were Jack Reacher with a psychology degree. Palumbo, who's willing to do absolutely anything to keep up the tension, succeeds admirably. Readers who don't require originality and plausibility in their detective thrillers will be as happy as career politicians whose skeletons are securely locked away.

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November 1, 2011

Pittsburgh psychologist Dan Rinaldi's (Mirror Image) boxing skills serve him well in this high-octane police procedural, which opens with a bank robbery gone awry. Brought in by the police to help debrief a released hostage, Rinaldi again finds himself in something much more convoluted than a simple robbery. Somehow this case is tied in with the district attorney's current campaign for governor. Stick with the two story lines, because ten rounds of sleuthing are required before Rinaldi's astute powers of observation and physical agility can crack this case wide open. VERDICT Lots of action coupled with earnest conversations makes for a roller-coaster read. Veteran screenwriter Palumbo composes his book as if it were a TV movie, filling it with a few too many thinly developed characters. Still, the intriguing plot and the psychological angle will hold your attention. For pacing, action, and a look at the underbelly of big cities, fans of Robert Ellis's Lena Gamble mysteries might take to this series.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011
The hero of this fine novel is a clinical psychologist and thus part of a detective tradition that includes Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware and James Patterson's Alex Cross. The parallels are irresistible: the solvers of puzzles in the interior world apply their techniques to mysteries in the one outside. The novel begins conventionally enough: Daniel Rinaldi, consulting shrink with the Pittsburgh police, is called upon to counsel the shattered survivor of a botched hostage situation. His results are so stunning he's invited to a fund-raising dinner for a hard-nosed political candidate and manages to thwart an assassination attempt. Then he's kidnapped and nearly killed attempting to recover evidence of bank fraud. Palumbo, also a psychologist, has used his knowledge to create a huge paranoid delusion: everything is connected, it's all part of a master plot, and nearly everybody's in on it. But this time it's all true. Rinaldi's methods are as much Columbo as shrink: he notices details that don't fit and picks at them until the whole psychodrama comes clear. A smart, strong read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)