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I have long loved John Katzenbach's novels (with the notable exception of HART'S WAR, which less than thrilled me, and which Stephen King was able to demolish in his memoir ON WRITING). THE ANALYST, however, is beyond wonderful. It is nasty, thrilling fun, with a level of self-discovery that makes it resonate.
The concept: Dr. Frederick Starks, a fiftyish psychoanalyst living a quiet and pretty much isolated life following the death of his wife, receives a communication from a person calling himself "Rumplestilskin," warning that fifty-two of his relatives will have their lives destroyed in two weeks unless Starks can either figure out his tormentor's identity...or instead mollify the madman by agreeing to commit suicide.
Starks barely knows his relatives. Most of them are distant. He has not been in contact for them in years. But when he finds out that one 16-year-old cousin has been threatened with rape, he knows that the ultimatum is real. Moreover, the mysterious Rumplestilskin has no intention of letting Starks have an easy time before the deadline...for as the days pass, and Starks exhausts the angles of investigation open to him, Rumplestilskin and his allies destroy every single aspect of the doctor's life, from the professional to the financial, just to make suicide seem ever more inevitable.
It's a battle of wits between a mild man and a ruthless one, and Starks has no chance of winning the game planned for him. Not with his resources diminishing day by day.
Unless he turns over the game board. Finds out why this has been done to him.
Starts a new game, this time with Rumplestilskin and his allies as the unwilling players.
And in the process discovers just how capable, and ruthless, he can really be.
The result is just about the most satisfying novel of payback I've read in a long, long time. The mild-mannered Dr. Ricky Starks turns out, to his own grim delight as well as ours, to have been a very dangerous man to cross. His confrontations with the mysterious game players are nasty and satisfying
and in all possible ways right, with not only revenge but the Doctor's own redemption a major issue throughout.
Adam-Troy says check it out.
(23 March 2003)
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