Alan Gregory is a clinical psychologist. He is called into help
with a decade-old double murder of two teenage girls in small
town Colorado. The girls were discovered some time after their
murders, and their bodies had been mutilated. Gregory is working
with Locard, a group of some of the best investigators in the
country – prosecutors, forensic specialists, and detectives –
trying to find clues missed in the original fruitless investigation.

It turns out that there are all sorts of new pieces of information
to be discovered – so many that Gregory starts to suspect that
the original investigation was half-hearted. He talks with the
families of the girls to see what they remember, and it turns
out that at least one of them was in psychotherapy with Raymonde
Welle, who soon went on to have his own therapy-radio show (a
la Frasier Crane) and then, riding on his popularity, to a seat
in Congress. Now Welle is running for the Senate, and it’s clear
he is a man with a lot to lose from bad publicity. The local sheriff
who ran the original investigation is now Welle’s right-hand man.
Welle is a man who seems to be followed by death: his wife was
murdered by one of his patients just before he ran for his first
elected position. Now, there are questions about his campaign
finance. Gregory has to try to figure out exactly how Welle is
involved in all this violence.

Cold Case starts well: White introduces each of the many
characters methodically, and each is memorable. The trouble is
that the plot keeps on getting more complicated and implausible,
and by time the final chapters roll around, the real culprits
are confessing and clearing up all the details and red herrings
just like they did on the old Scooby Doo cartoons.

Having a psychologist for a narrator is a good idea: it is a way
of emphasizing all the emotional issues that come up in murder
cases for families and investigators. We get to know about the
personal lives of most of the lead characters in quite believable
ways. Gregory is a sincere sort of guy with his own weaknesses,
and the climax of the book, involving nighttime escapades in the
middle of a flattened forest, bring out many of his fears. The
writing is unpretentious and vivid, although it is often repetitive
– it’s possible to skip whole chapters and still have all the
essential details repeated several times. I would have been happy
if the book had been cut by one third of its length, and the writing
made leaner. In the end, Cold Case surprisingly leaves
one mystified by the bizarre choices of some of the main characters;
as a psychological profile of criminals and crime fighters, it
falls flat.

The audiobook version is
read by Scott Brick, who does a great job at keeping the story
interesting and bringing alive the different characters.

© 2001 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.

Christian Perring,
Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College,
Long Island. He is editor of Metapsychology Online Review.
His main research is on philosophical issues in psychiatry.
He is especially interested in exploring how philosophers can
play a greater role in public life. He is available to give talks
on many philosophical or controversial issues in mental health.

Categories: Fiction