Barry Ergang Reviews: HEAD WOUNDS (2018) by Dennis Palumbo

HEAD WOUNDS (2018) by Dennis Palumbo

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Almost twelve years prior to the story’s present, clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi and his wife Barbara were what appeared to be the victims of a mugging “by an armed thug in a hoodie,” an incident which left Barbara dead and Rinaldi severely wounded. He has been haunted by the incident ever since in a grotesque kind of irony, because as a consultant to the Pittsburgh Police Department (although not without his antagonists therein), he numbers among his clientele both civilian crime victims and crime-fighting professionals who have been traumatized by violent events. Complicating his life further is the dossier given to him by a dying man which suggests that Barbara’s death was not the result of a random mugging but a deliberate murder. The problem is, the assailant’s “face was almost totally obscured by the peaked hood and the black of night,” so his identity is unknown.

When Head Wounds opens, Rinaldi is still emotionally contending with episodes recounted in Phantom Limb. While sipping Jack Daniels and listening to Miles Davis on his stereo system, when he’s nearly killed by a bullet that shatters the picture window of the front room of his house, the result of a domestic dispute between neighbors Eddie Burke and his wealthy girlfriend Joy Steadman, Rinaldi is ultimately drawn into a nightmarish cat-and-mouse contest that pits him against his late wife’s psychopathic killer.

Unlike its predecessors in the series, Head Wounds is not a whodunit, so it is not a spoiler to reveal that the novel’s cunning psychopathic villain is the extremely tech-savvy erotomaniac Sebastian Maddox, who could give Hannibal Lecter a run for his money when it comes to soulless savagery. In his zeal to torment and then eventually kill Rinaldi, Maddox goes after those who are close to the psychologist relationally and/or professionally, in the process putting the reader through the emotional ringer as well. I’ll refrain from going into details because I don’t want to diminish anyone’s page-turning excitement—of which there is a cornucopia.

The skillfully written and structured Head Wounds is strong on characterization and a sense of place, undoubtedly the result of the author’s background as a working psychotherapist and native Pittsburghian. A state-of-the-art thriller, it could function as a textbook about how to create and then intensify already high-tension situations in suspense fiction.

The fifth novel in a series well worth the time of readers who don’t object to realistic (i.e., strong) street language and on-page violence as well as some—but not overdone—on-page sexuality, Dennis Palumbo’s latest entry in the Daniel Rinaldi series is one of those gems about which I’d advise thriller fans to start only if they haven’t other things they absolutely must do, because they won’t want to put it down once they’ve read the first few pages.

In case you hadn’t already guessed, Head Wounds is unequivocally and enthusiastically recommended.

© 2018 Barry Ergang  

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