cover image Masquerade

Masquerade

Lowell Cauffiel. Doubleday Books, $18.95 (343pp) ISBN 978-0-385-23772-7

Detroit psychologist Alan Canty maintained a second identity as ``Dr. Al Miller,'' an alleged physician who was drawn to the Motor City's lower depths. He began an affair with 19-year-old prostitute Dawn Spens and got to know her ex-convict pimp, John Fry; both of them were heavy drug users. The analyst lavished great amounts of money on Spens, well over a hundred-thousand dollars, all but bankrupting himself; his wife, also a psychologist, had no inkling of his double life or of his burgeoning debts. Finally, when Dr. Miller tried to break off the relationship, the pimp killed him. Cauffiel, who covered the Fry murder trial in 1986 for Michigan magazine, does not attempt a psychological profile of Canty, but he suggests that a poor self-image may have been at the root of the duality. Photos not seen by PW. (August)