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Every Fifteen Minutes

Review

Every Fifteen Minutes

Every 15 minutes, 17-year-old Max Jakubowski performs a set of rituals that help him ease his OCD and anxiety. He touches his right temple just once and says “red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple-brown-black.” His anxiety has recently increased because of the terminal prognosis his beloved grandmother just received. She and emergency room physician Laurie Fortuno think he might benefit from the services of the hospital’s Chief of Psychiatry, Dr. Eric Parrish, so they set up a meeting. Eric, who is dealing with his own stress due to his recent divorce and ongoing custody battle, immediately takes to Max and offers to treat him privately. Things soon start spiraling wildly out of control for both Max and Eric, as well as all those around them, in Lisa Scottoline's latest thriller, EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES.

"There are the requisite twists and turns you'd expect in a thriller, which are deftly handled, and a couple of them are really surprising. The pace is breakneck, and the context of mental health and psychiatry adds an interesting tone to the novel."

Over the course of the next few days, Max's grandmother dies and the girl he admires is found murdered. Eric believes Max to be innocent even after he holds a group of children hostage at the mall and threatens to kill them before ending his own life. While Eric sets to work trying to clear Max's name, he himself is charged with sexual harassment of a medical student and assault of a patient, and finds himself suspended from work and under suspicion in the murder of Max's crush. To make matters worse, his relationship with his ex-wife sours even more, leaving him afraid of losing his young daughter, Hannah. The action and danger continue to escalate as it becomes clear that someone is trying to destroy Eric, and anyone close to him is in harm’s way.

From the first page, readers know they are dealing with a sociopath and are privy to that shadowy figure's inner monologue. But Scottoline keeps us in the dark about the identity of that person until the very end. There are the requisite twists and turns you'd expect in a thriller, which are deftly handled, and a couple of them are really surprising. The pace is breakneck, and the context of mental health and psychiatry adds an interesting tone to the novel.

The weakest character, ironically, may be Eric Parrish. For a top notch and very successful psychiatrist, he seems terrible at reading people, clueless and overly trusting. In fact, another character, the likable and funny lawyer Paul Fortuno, tells Eric, “[Y]our naivete, it touches me. You are like an extremely brainy newborn.” Why Eric's attachment to Max is so immediate and complete is never satisfactorily explained, not even by his divorce and personal history of anxiety. But his belief in Max, even to the point of suspecting random people of murder and opening himself up to dangerous manipulations, do in fact drive the story. It is in the juxtaposition between Eric's trusting and sensitive nature and the sociopathic nemesis bent on destroying him that the real tensions in EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES are found.

While more of the sociopathic voice could've helped balance this fun, detailed and eventful novel, Scottoline was clearly trying to keep readers guessing and building toward the final surprise.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman on April 14, 2015

Every Fifteen Minutes
by Lisa Scottoline

  • Publication Date: March 1, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
  • ISBN-10: 1250010128
  • ISBN-13: 9781250010124