Compulsion (2008)

COMPULSION Keith Ablow (St. Martin's, $24.95) Ablow may be a practicing psychiatrist, but with his third murder mystery featuring Boston forensic shrink Frank Clevenger, he's guilty of literary malpractice. It's hard to say which cliche is more painful: Frank's melodramatic past (he's a recovering boozer and cokehead and a childhood-abuse victim) or the predictably dysfunctional family he's investigating in an infanticide case (the suspects include win-at-all-costs billionaire Darwin Bishop; his seductive ex-model wife, Julia; and their mentally unstable Russian-adoptee son, Billy). Ablow spews out prose that's more purple than Barney the dinosaur (''The warmth of her lips and tongue, the press of her hands against my back...transported me to an emotional state in which passion and peacefulness not only coexisted, but fed one another''). Stick to writing prescriptions, Doc.

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• Book Review Compulsion | Tanner Stransky