Barry Ergang Reviews: PANIC ATTACK (2021) by Dennis Palumbo

            On a bitterly cold afternoon in late October, I was one of twenty thousand witnesses to a murder.

            That’s protagonist/narrator Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, clinical psychologist and occasional consultant to the Pittsburgh Police Department, in the opening sentence/paragraph of Panic Attack, the sixth title in the stellar series of mystery thrillers by Dennis Palumbo.

            Rinaldi has acquired something of a “brand” as a result of his involvement in a number of police investigations; from his role in the most recent case (see Head Wounds) involving Sebastian Maddox, the assailant who, years before, killed his wife and left him wounded and emotionally scarred; and from the subsequent development of his reputation for helping traumatized victims of violence, both official and civilian. Thus, the night before the event described above, he delivered the commencement address at Teasdale College, located in the small town of Lockhart less than twenty miles from Pittsburgh. Teasdale’s dean, Martin Hobbs, has invited him to join him at the game wherein Teasdale will face off with its division rival.   

            Shortly before the opening kickoff, Teasdale’s mascot, a student in a tiger costume, takes the field to perform. Shortly after, the tiger’s encouraging crowd noise is overridden by a gunshot which leaves the mascot lying motionless on the field. Rinaldi becomes immediately but indirectly embroiled in both the local investigation and one that expands considerably when a serial sniper begins picking off other ostensibly unrelated victims and creates a panicked atmosphere in the greater Pittsburgh area. 

            Although initially it would seem Rinaldi’s role in the Steel City Sniper case, as the media has come to label it, is strictly as an unfortunate witness to the death of the first victim, he is gradually drawn into it by a number of circumstances and individuals.

Among the latter are sophomore Jason Graham; Teasdale College’s assistant dean, Dr. Indra Bishara and her troubled daughter; Lockhart’s Sheriff Roy Gibson; Pittsburgh PD Sergeant Harry Polk, a Rinaldi “frenemy” from bygone investigations and one with serious personal issues apart from this one; and politically ambitious Pittsburgh District Attorney Leland Sinclair. Rinaldi is also one of many witnesses to the sniper’s execution of a city councilman.

            To cite a variation on an old expression with regard to Panic Attack, “you can’t tell the corpses without a scorecard” because more murders follow and Rinaldi becomes unavoidably caught up in their cases, not least because attempts are made on his life.

            He must also contend with various traumatized clients, his current intimate relationship with FBI agent Gloria Reese, and with prior involvements with and attractions to women he met after his wife’s death.

            Forgive some of this reviewer’s vagueness about story details. In mystery/thrillers of this sort I hate to reveal anything that might be regarded as a spoiler lest I detract from readers’ excitement and enjoyment. This definitely applies to the novel under consideration, which should keep most readers turning its pages because they are laden with twists and surprises. 

But it’s important to add that besides being a thriller, Panic Attack is also a novel of character. Dennis Palumbo, like Rinaldi, is a practicing clinical psychologist, so the story’s primary figures are not cardboard cutouts. As a native Pittsburghian, he also delivers a strong sense of place. What also struck yours truly about one of the plotline’s major revelations is its timeliness.

As anyone who has read this far has undoubtedly surmised, I’m as enthusiastic a fan of this novel as I am of the others in the Daniel Rinaldi series, and can strongly recommend it to all but those readers who cannot contend with raw language and a modicum of on-screen sexuality. 

 Barry Ergang © 2021 

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.

FFB Review: MIRROR IMAGE (2010) by Dennis Palumbo Reviewed by Barry Ergang

From the massive archive and the first book of the series. Next Tuesday Barry reviews the brand new book in the series, Panic Attack. 

A clinical psychologist who specializes in treating those who have experienced severe traumas, Dr. Daniel Rinaldi has been working with Kevin Merrick for six months, during which the troubled and previously hospitalized young man has gradually identified with Rinaldi such that he’s trying to become his therapist by stealing small items from the office and “(H)esitantly at first, and then quite blatantly, he’d begun dressing like me…His beard, without my telltale sprigs of gray, was coming in nicely….Then today, when I opened the connecting door to the waiting room for our regularly scheduled appointment, I found Kevin hanging up a dripping jacket next to mine on the standing coat rack.” The jacket is very similar to one of Rinaldi’s own.

His session with Kevin at the novel’s opening includes a significant revelation about the latter’s past, a revelation that amounts to something of a breakthrough that has been a long time coming. When the session ends, Rinaldi says, “I meant what I said in there. It took guts to reveal such an old, painful secret…” Kevin replies, “Hell, man, I got lots of secrets…”

Rinaldi never learns directly from his patient what they are because, upon departing from the office, Kevin is murdered in the parking garage beneath the building. As a sometime consultant to the Pittsburgh police department, and as a man with the kind of conscience that demands being in on the capture of the murderer, Rinaldi is not about to let up even when it’s suggested that Kevin’s resemblance to him might have made him the actual but mistaken target. 

I’m loath to reveal any other details because the impeccably paced and plotted Mirror Image is fraught with multiple twists and surprises I don’t want to spoil. (I advise readers to be wary of comments at sites like Amazon, Goodreads and others of that sort because they’ll learn of some major plot points before they discover them in the novel itself, and thus ruin the surprises.)

Consequently, I’ll only point out that several other murders occur, including one for which Rinaldi is a prime suspect; that an influential, amoral billionaire who might have political ambitions plays a significant role; that Rinaldi develops an intimate but complex relationship with the very attractive Casey Walters, an assistant district attorney; that he has conflicting issues with a district attorney who aspires to a state governorship; and that some questionable business dealings might factor in to some of the aforementioned events.

Author Dennis Palumbo started out as a screenwriter, and is responsible for the wonderful film My Favorite Year, episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter and other television series. He went on to become a psychotherapist himself, so his fictional protagonist, a man who has known severe trauma himself, speaks plausibly about the patients he deals with as well as dealing with some of his own issues.

An impeccably paced and plotted whodunit/thriller with a strong sense of place, the dialogue in Mirror Image is skillfully rendered in the manner I’ve come to associate with the likes of Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and Jeremiah Healey: dialogue that individuates characters and makes them come alive and practically walk off the page. Easily one of the best mystery novels I’ve read in quite a while, and the first in the Daniel Rinaldi series I look forward to reading more of, I strongly recommend it to all but those readers who find moderately graphic (but not protracted) violent and sexual moments, as well as some street language, offensive.

Barry Ergang © 2017, 2021

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work, including his mystery novelette “The Play of Light and Shadow,” can be found at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/

WGA West: When Your Only Weapon Is Inaction by Dennis Palumbo

WGA West: When Your Only Weapon Is Inaction by Dennis Palumbo

In the piece, Dennis Palumbo talks about how the pandemic is a background hum in all of our lives. Since 2017, grief has been the background roar of my life. Losing my Mom in January was bad and meant I was parentless though it was not unexpected at her age and with her medical issues.I had known her time was limited. I also knew by that fall that another horrible event was on my immediate horizon.  Losing Sandi that December after a six year plus fight against the god damn cancer was not unexpected.  I thought I was ready. I was so very wrong. Grief has been a background roar in my life ever since. The pandemic hum is not helping that as my primary way of coping, escaping to the library and bookstores, has not been an option. I am not a therapist and certainly do not play one on tv, but, as he points out in his piece, turning the television off does help. The piece resonated with me and I suspect it will for many of you as well. 

FFB Review: FEVER DREAM (2011) by Dennis Palumbo Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry Ergang is back on the blog today with an all new review for FFB. For the full list of reading suggestions, check out Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom blog. 

FEVER DREAM (2011) by Dennis Palumbo

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Clinical psychologist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, in addition to maintaining a private practice, has been a consultant to the Pittsburgh Police Department for seven years. A victim of a violent crime himself, he understands only too well how profoundly other victims, whether official or civilian, can suffer and need help to recover when impacted by crime-bred violence.

In the middle of a therapy session with a carjacking victim, Rinaldi gets a call from Pittsburgh PD Detective Eleanor Lowrey, with whom he’s worked in the past. She explains that there’s “An armed robbery in progress. Midtown, the First Allegheny Bank. We’ve got uniforms, SWAT…Looks like a couple perps…Apparently somebody’s dead in there.” Rinaldi terminates the session and heads to the crime scene.

Although there are four hostages still in the bank, one, a woman named Treva Williams, has been released. She’s an emotional wreck, and Rinaldi does his best to console her under the circumstances. When the bank is finally sieged and Rinaldi is among those who get inside, what they find is utter carnage. Only a wounded security guard named Vickers has survived.

But while he’s eventually drawn into the situation as a therapist for Treva Williams, Rinaldi also becomes involved with the gubernatorial campaign of  District Attorney Leland Sinclair, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, as well as varying mutual  relationships with members of the Pittsburgh Police Department—i.e., the aforementioned Eleanor Lowrey: potentially amorous; her partner Detective Harry Polk:  tenuous at best; and Lieutenant Stu Biegler: outright hostility. Moreover, Rinaldi learns from a professional colleague that a relatively young man, Andrew Parker, whom he knew from his time working at a psychiatric facility called Ten Oaks, has apparently committed suicide.

In what starts out as an apparently straightforward thriller but ultimately becomes, additionally, a neatly-paced and deftly-rendered whodunit, Rinaldi finds himself up against vicious killers and criminal plots in his efforts to solve multiple crimes and stay alive.   

Fever Dream is the second of Dennis Palumbo’s Daniel Rinaldi mysteries. As I’ve indicated in reviews of other titles in this series, I don’t like to provide more than the sketchiest sense of the plotlines lest I inadvertently reveal any of the twists and surprises in a story with a superior sense of characterization befitting an author who, like Rinaldi, is a clinical psychologist, and who, as a Pittsburgh native, delivers a strong sense of place.    That said, fans of mysteries which are both hardboiled and cerebral owe it to themselves to have a look at this novel and the series of which it’s a part, as long as they aren’t squeamish about street language, on-screen violence and, in some of the entries, sexuality.

© 2019 Barry Ergang

Among other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang's own impossible crime novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, is available at Amazon and Smashwords as is his recently released book of poetry, Farrago, and other entertaining reads. For more on Barry’s books as well as his editing services, check out Barry’s website.

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  

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Amazon and Smashwords. The latter site is running its annual sale through the month of July. Barry and Kevin Tipple are among the participating authors, so take advantage of their reduced prices.

Author Dennis Palumbo on Erotomania for Mystery Scene

Author Dennis Palumbo on Erotomania for Mystery Scene

Barry Ergang Reviews: PHANTOM LIMB (2014) by Dennis Palumbo

 PHANTOM LIMB (2014) by Dennis Palumbo

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Dealing with Skip Hines, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who lost a leg but can still feel it, prompts clinical psychologist/first-person narrator Daniel Rinaldi to muse about his deceased wife: “Yet, like with my father, a felt sense of her lingers. Perhaps this is true for everyone. That those with whom we’re most intimately connected persist, not only in memory, but almost like missing parts of ourselves. Like phantom limbs, we feel their presence, even though they’re gone forever….”

The concept applies in degrees blatant and subtle to some—not all—of the other characters in a variegated cast which includes and aged and infirm billionaire industrialist; his bitter alcoholic son; a tough and tough-minded head of a private security agency who lives on the industrialist’s estate; the industrialist’s attorney; a canny but narcissistic crime boss and his murderous chief henchman; a paranoid schizophrenic bar employee and his girlfriend; Pittsburgh Police Department (to which Rinaldi is a consultant) personnel; and FBI agents, one of whom is friendly toward Rinaldi, the other haughty and officious.    

 Thus we come to my problem when trying to review a Daniel Rinaldi mystery/thriller, the  construction of which is a course in itself about how to grab a reader on page one—see my review of Mirror Image—and keep him or her turning the pages to its stirring climax. The problem is one of degree: how much of the storyline to provide without giving away too much lest I spoil potential readers’ excitement and enjoyment of an exceptionally tense novel.

Here goes:

When Lisa Campbell arrives at Rinaldi’s office, he recognizes her immediately: “I knew her story, of course. At least, the public version. Most people here in Pittsburgh and environs did, too. Especially in her hometown of Waterson, about a hundred miles east of the city. Her career journey, from small-town beauty contestant to Playboy Playmate to sexy film actress, had been a long, well-publicized one. Accompanied by the shrill carping of Waterson’s outraged local press, ex-communication from her church, and the painful yet predictable estrangement from her pious, deeply conservative family.” After a “career” of mostly being nude, tortured and slain in a number of Hollywood cinematic schlockers, and also having “a reputation as a reliably freaky party animal, clubbing every night with the rich and trendy,” married and divorced twice, she eventually returned home to Waterson, where her family rejected her. Subsequently, she went to Pittsburgh and “landed a job as a clerical assistant in the CEO’s suite at Harland Industries, a Fortune 500 favorite. After six months, she landed the CEO himself.”

So for about the last ten years she’s been married for the third time, now wife to septuagenarian Charles Harland, about whom Rinaldi observes: “People were possessions to him. Prized for their utility. For what they could do for him, or for what they represented.” When Lisa meets Rinaldi, she makes it clear that she knows a fair amount about his past before telling him: “Here’s the deal: I plan to kill myself at seven o’clock tonight. Which means you have fifty minutes to talk me out of it.”

When they reach the end of a revelatory session, Rinaldi accompanies her through the waiting room to the door to the outer corridor. When he opens it, he beholds a man who is “Big, taller than me. Filling the doorway. In a black jacket and jeans. Eyes hidden by dark glasses.

“He had something in his hand. Raising it…”

When he awakens from the assault, Rinaldi learns that Lisa has been kidnapped, is later summoned to Charles Harland’s estate where he meets some of the aforementioned persons and learns Harland’s private nurse has disappeared, and is chosen by the cunning culprit, who has managed to electronically surveil the estate, to deliver five million dollars in bearer bonds to the site of his choice.

What happens beyond this I won’t reveal beyond saying that things don’t go as hoped, corpses pile up, and that Rinaldi gets further involved to his personal peril and that of others. Readers who find raw street language and “on-screen” violence offensive will want to avoid Phantom Limb. Those who don’t, and who enjoy meticulously-paced, action-packed, character-driven, surprise-laden, high-tension thrillers (whew! My word processor just ran out of hyphens) will find it well worth their time.

© 2018 Barry Ergang

Interested readers can find some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work at Amazon and Smashwords.

Crimespree: IN CONVERSATION WITH DENNIS PALUMBO ABOUT HEAD WOUNDS

Crimespree: IN CONVERSATION WITH DENNIS PALUMBO ABOUT HEAD WOUNDS

FFB Review: MIRROR IMAGE (2010) by Dennis Palumbo - Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry is back today for FFB with a review of a book that was not published in the distant past. Make sure you check out the full list of reading suggestions over at Todd Mason's blog.

MIRROR IMAGE (2010) by Dennis Palumbo

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

A clinical psychologist who specializes in treating those who have experienced severe traumas, Dr. Daniel Rinaldi has been working with Kevin Merrick for six months, during which the troubled and previously hospitalized young man has gradually identified with Rinaldi such that he’s trying to become his therapist by stealing small items from the office and “(H)esitantly at first, and then quite blatantly, he’d begun dressing like me…His beard, without my telltale sprigs of gray, was coming in nicely….Then today, when I opened the connecting door to the waiting room for our regularly scheduled appointment, I found Kevin hanging up a dripping jacket next to mine on the standing coat rack.” The jacket is very similar to one of Rinaldi’s own. 

His session with Kevin at the novel’s opening includes a significant revelation about the latter’s past, a revelation that amounts to something of a breakthrough that has been a long time coming. When the session ends, Rinaldi says, “I meant what I said in there. It took guts to reveal such an old, painful secret…” Kevin replies, “Hell, man, I got lots of secrets…”

Rinaldi never learns directly from his patient what they are because, upon departing from the office, Kevin is murdered in the parking garage beneath the building. As a sometime consultant to the Pittsburgh police department, and as a man with the kind of conscience that demands being in on the capture of the murderer, Rinaldi is not about to let up even when it’s suggested that Kevin’s resemblance to him might have made him the actual but mistaken target.  

I’m loath to reveal any other details because the impeccably paced and plotted Mirror Image is fraught with multiple twists and surprises I don’t want to spoil. (I advise readers to be wary of comments at sites like Amazon, Goodreads and others of that sort because they’ll learn of some major plot points before they discover them in the novel itself, and thus ruin the surprises.) 

Consequently, I’ll only point out that several other murders occur, including one for which Rinaldi is a prime suspect; that an influential, amoral billionaire who might have political ambitions plays a significant role; that Rinaldi develops an intimate but complex relationship with the very attractive Casey Walters, an assistant district attorney; that he has conflicting issues with a district attorney who aspires to a state governorship; and that some questionable business dealings might factor in to some of the aforementioned events.

Author Dennis Palumbo started out as a screenwriter, and is responsible for the wonderful film My Favorite Year, episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter and other television series. He went on to become a psychotherapist himself, so his fictional protagonist, a man who has known severe trauma himself, speaks plausibly about the patients he deals with as well as dealing with some of his own issues. 

An impeccably paced and plotted whodunit/thriller with a strong sense of place, the dialogue in Mirror Image is skillfully rendered in the manner I’ve come to associate with the likes of Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and Jeremiah Healey: dialogue that individuates characters and makes them come alive and practically walk off the page. Easily one of the best mystery novels I’ve read in quite a while, and the first in the Daniel Rinaldi series I look forward to reading more of, I strongly recommend it to all but those readers who find moderately graphic (but not protracted) violent and sexual moments, as well as some street language, offensive. 

© 2017 Barry Ergang

Some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work, including his mystery novelette “The Play of Light and Shadow,” can be found at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/

Breaking News: Writing is Hard! (Dennis Palumbo in Psychology Today)

Breaking News: Writing is Hard! (Dennis Palumbo in Psychology Today)

Via Psychology Today-- Should You Write With a Partner?

Should You Write With a Partner?

Via Fiction Southeast-- “Through a Glass Darkly: Crime Fiction as a Window on American Culture” by Dennis Palumbo

“Through a Glass Darkly: Crime Fiction as a Window on American Culture” by Dennis Palumbo

Reviews Elsewhere

Awhile back I reviewed Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do by Michael Brandman here. Author Dennis Palumbo weighs in on the book here in his column for the Los Angeles Review Of Books.

I have reviewed A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block before here and I wasn't at all positive. I think this very well might be one of those books that I didn't appreciate at the time I read it because I simply wasn't old enough or mature enough to get it. I know I am a far different person and by extension reviewer now than I was five years ago. It just got reviewed again and you can read that here.

Yesterday was Ross Macdonald day for Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott. The reviews and links are here along with reviews/links to other titles by other authors. You could spend many lifetimes just reading the books that are suggested for FFB. You should get to work.

More on SUSPECT by Robert Crais

Having recently read my review of the book, author Dennis Palumbo sent me the link to his review in the Los Angeles Review of Books. His review titled "Heal, Dog, Heal!: Robert Crais's "Suspect"" can be found here.