Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an aesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can't free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path. As Denial opens, all of Clevenger's understanding and expertise are put to the test: He has been asked to rubber-stamp the mental competence of a homeless schizophrenic who has confessed to a particularly grisly murder. As evidence of a shocking series of murders begins to mount, Clevenger will be forced to confront his own most terrifying and powerful demons. On his way to jail to certify the sanity of a homeless man accused of murder, Dr. Frank Klevenger listens to a B-52's CD and snorts cocaine as he drives from the handsome seaside town of Marblehead to the urban decay of Lynn, Massachusetts. So much for mental health. But Keith R. Ablow, a practicing psychiatrist himself, quickly shows us why Dr. Klevenger is so good at his job: his own personal demons give him an unusual understanding of troubled minds, which lifts this debut thriller to an insightful and exciting level. Lynn, Massachusetts, is being terrorized by a murderer-mutilator in its midst, and psychiatrist Frank Clevenger gets the call to take the confession of the suspect, a schizoid who believes he is General William Westmoreland. The general, however, is not the only unbalanced one in this creepy thriller: Dr. Clevenger is a high-strung, coke-tooting, booze-swilling, strip-bar-and bed-hopping time bomb who barely keeps a lid on his anger. His explosiveness factors into the mystery when, despite the fact that the general kills himself, the body count continues to mount, and Clevenger either knew or slept with the victims. So did a competing prime suspect, who also dallies with Clevenger's live-in girlfriend. With so many easy zippers in this homicidal General Hospital, author Ablow could have inadvertently let his plot float away in soap-opera silliness, but he renders such a credible psychological portrait of Clevenger that the final revelation of the culprit is a satisfying surprise. A clever and tense debut. Gilbert Taylor "This is a deliciously creepy psychological thriller that could only have been written by a psychiatrist or a psychiatric patient. Keith Ablow is a very fine writer. Denial is a stark and terrifying journey into the mind of the criminally insane, an absolutely spellbinding and shocking tale." -- Nelson DeMille , author of By The Rivers of Babylon "Deftly, with driving prose, Ablow portrays the horror and bleakness of damaged lives. A dark and compelling debut." -- Jonathan Kellerman , author of The Clinic ger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an aesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can't free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path. As Denial opens, all of Clevenger's understanding and expertise are put to the test: He has been asked to rubber-stamp the mental competence of a homeless schizophrenic who has confessed to a particularly grisly murder. As evidence of a shocking series of murders begins to mount, Clevenger will be forced to confront his own most terrifying and powerful demons. Keith Ablow is a forensic psychiatrist who has worked with violent, severely mentally ill and drug-dependent men and women from every level of society. His clients range from those who are homeless or imprisoned to executives of large corporations to members of law enforcement and government. His view of the world in which we live -- that all of us suffer, that none of us is born evil, and that each of us must be helped to confront the truth about our lives -- is central to his therapeutic approach with patients and his writing. Ablow was raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brown University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. While a medical student, he worked as a reporter for Newsweek magazine, a freelance writer for the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun , and a medical editor for Lifetime Medical Television in Los Angeles. His first book was a guide to winning admission to medical school and preserving one's humanity during the four grueling years that follow. After Johns Hopkins, Ablow returned to the Boston area for a psychiatry residence at Tufts/New England Medical Center hospitals. He continued to write about psychiatry and social issues for national publications, including US News & World Report and USA Today , and he authored three more books for the general public: How to Cope with Depression , To Wrestle