Denial

February 27, 1995
From first-time novelist and longtime psychologist Comfort comes an entertaining but not entirely convincing tale of romantic suspense with an overlay of psychoanalytic theory. The heroine, Sarah Rinsley, is a well-known therapist in L.A. (she even has a radio call-in show) who becomes entangled with a dangerous patient, Nick Arnholt. Though a seemingly charming and successful attorney, Nick exhibits all kinds of self-destructive behavior: he uses cocaine, courts a parade of women without sustaining a relationship and ultimately behaves irresponsibly enough to lose his job. But matters reach a crisis point when he becomes sexually obsessed with Sarah and believes that she returns his feelings. Sarah is herself distressed by her therapy sessions with Nick as they stir up a number of unresolved issues from the past. As Nick becomes a more demanding patient, Sarah's burgeoning romance with the sexy Nicaraguan restaurateur Humbero Cortazar begins to unravel. She also finds herself confronting aspects of her relationship with her mother that plunge her into a depression and psychological confusion. At this juncture, Nick slaps her with a lawsuit--slanderous, scandalous and spurious. Will she be able to defend her reputation, on which her future happiness (not to mention economic solvency) depends? Comfort seems to have constructed her characters from textbook cases of dysfunctional behavior, and the denouement will strain the limits of even the most willingly suspended disbelief. But readers of commercial fiction who enjoy suspense coated with slick analytic detail will doubtlessly find Sarah and her problems appealing.

April 11, 2022
The engaging speculative latest from screenwriter and novelist Raymond (Freebird) imagines a future in which a slew of energy executives and lobbyists have been convicted of environmental crimes. In 2052, reporter Jack Henry is hot on the trail of Robert Cave, a former fossil fuel official who fled the U.S. during the trials in 2032, was convicted in absentia, and has never paid for his offenses. After one of Jack’s sources spots Cave in Guadalajara, Jack convinces his boss to send him to Mexico to ferret Cave out. Jack scouts Cave at a museum café, and Cave strikes up a conversation with him. The two meet again the next day, and as Jack is introduced to Cave’s new life, he grows fond of his target, who knows nothing of Jack’s planned exposure, and wrestles with the ramifications of following through with his scheme. The narrative works best when it focuses on Jack and Cave, as their interactions drive the novel into unexpected directions. Less successful is a tame romance subplot between Jack and an old friend. Still, Raymond satisfies with a clever vision of a not-too-distant future. The moral ambiguity at the center leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.

May 15, 2022
Novelist and screenwriter Raymond takes us into the future in this cautionary tale about the potential devastation of global warming. But it's more than that. It's also a story of love, loyalty, and morality, all presented in the form of a thriller. A newspaper reporter gets a tip about the whereabouts of a wanted man and concocts a plan to bring him to justice, but he quickly discovers that the situation isn't as black-and-white as he assumed. The carefully sculpted prose has an addictive quality: the startling first sentence ("To look into my own eyeball seemed wrong, but there it was, floating in a cylinder of pale blue light") compels us read the second sentence, and before we know it, we're almost at the end. With its fully realized depiction of a world recovering from cataclysmic events that happened only a couple of decades earlier, this is a natural fit for fans of near-future thrillers and for followers of Jeff VanderMeer's environmentally themed fiction.

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June 1, 2022
Thirty years in the future, following widespread environmental disasters, a newspaper reporter tracks down a pipeline manager responsible for massive crimes against the planet. The target, Robert Cave, has been hiding in Mexico, having escaped Nuremberg-like trials in Toronto that sent a rogues' gallery of energy executives to prison in the wake of sweeping global protests known as the Upheavals. The reporter, Jack Henry, who is from the Pacific Northwest, first encounters Cave in a Mexican coffee shop. The men instantly bond over Mark Twain: Jack is reading Huckleberry Finn; Cave, Tom Sawyer. They go to a museum and a bullfight together and have great chats. Increasingly, Jack is torn between his affection for the elderly and elegant Cave and his plan to set Cave up for "the Donaldson"--sandbagging his subject with tough questions, on camera, in the manner of Sam Donaldson, the famed TV reporter of yore. Shortly after witnessing a full solar eclipse with his new girlfriend, Sobie, Jack is stricken with a debilitating sickness. Is he experiencing symptoms of a potentially dangerous condition, or should he take it as a cosmic sign to back off from his cold objectives? Not all of the pieces of this existential puzzle, including Sobie, fit together. You may wonder why, assorted climatic catastrophes aside, 2052 doesn't seem much different from 2022. But Raymond's style is so smooth and agreeably understated, and yet so tension-packed, that it's easy to overlook any imperfections. A screenwriter as well as a novelist, he is less interested in doomsday and justice themes than in the complicated ways big moral causes play out. As calmly as the novel builds to its rapt conclusion, it's a page-turner. A cool, compelling take on an incendiary topic.

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