Every Fifteen Minutes

At the start of bestseller Scottoline’s standalone thriller, Dr. Eric Parish, the head of the psychiatric unit at Havemeyer General Hospital in suburban Philadelphia, is experiencing a professional high and a personal low. His team’s psychiatry service has just been ranked #2 in the nation by U.S. Medical Report, while his wife Caitlin has filed for divorce, sold the family home, and is trying to limit his visitation time with their daughter, Hannah. Things take a downward turn at work too, when Kristine Malin, a med student, sues him for sexual harassment, and almost simultaneously, the uber-antagonistic wife of a violent patient is threatening another suit against him and the hospital. Topping things off, Eric becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman. The chronicle of his decline is infrequently interrupted by the first-person narration of a homicidal sociopath who claims responsibility for Eric’s dire state. Since this mysterious killer is already a character in the story line, reader Newbern is posed with the problem of giving it away vocally. The actor (TV’s Scandal) solves that difficulty by having several characters sound somewhat like the murderer. In addition to keeping the killer’s identity a secret (and the reveal is a genuine jaw-dropper), Newbern maintains just the proper pace to take us through the book without being stopped by some of its hero’s less honorable moves. A St. Martin’s hardcover. (Apr.)