Mosaic

Leave it to someone as clever as the author of Haven to come up with a crackerjack thriller premise based on MPD (multiple personality disorder). Dr. Norman Zales is the director of Project Chameleon, whose sinister experiment aims to produce a new breed of spies and assassins who can switch personalities from innocent bystander to stone- cold killer in no time. Under the direction of government agent Prentice Teal, Zales is using his female patients (almost all sufferers of MPD are female) as guinea pigs to create ""mosaics""--people who can consciously control their metamorphoses into alternate personalities. Things come to a head when multitalented undercover agent Major Roger Grayson, who carries the physical and psychic scars of a near-fatal betrayal, is asked by a concerned general to investigate Zales and Teal. When an MPD patient commits a shocking crime, the subsequent coverup leads Grayson to the corrupt center of the experiment, a mental health research center, where young female victims of the insidious psychiatric network fight for their lives. At the heart of the labyrinthine mystery is a 10-year-old with near-miraculous powers and a reclusive woman called Susannah Card, both of whom are natural mosaics. Also participating in the fracas are some vengeful neo-Nazis, creepy fathers who've abused their daughters and then committed them to the institution (getting off scot-free as the girls become ""turnips""), and a clever romantic triangle with only two people. Maxim's complex plot bounces from APA lingo to computer hacking clues to the murderous/amorous conversation between one woman's two personalities, culminating in a tense climax. As in Haven, Maxim uses the conventions of comedy and farce--mistaken identity, chance encounters, shifts of allegiance and a deus ex machina--to exhilarating effect. This is top-notch thriller with a clever premise and equally proficient meditations on identity and character. (Mar.)