Risk Factor
by Charles
Atkins
A haunting
portrait of adolescent extremes
Publisher:
Leisure Books (January 2009)
At the inpatient adolescent unit of Boston's Commonwealth Hospital, a
young schizophrenic man sits next to the corpse of Nurse Helen
Weir. Blood-soaked and incoherent, Garrett is unable to give any
clues in his own defense that make sense to the doctors or those
investigating the case. When a second nurse is murdered, Dr. Molly Katz
has serious doubts about Garrett's guilt. As Molly seeks to protect
Garrett and unlock the key to his worsening condition, she must turn to
her knowledge of psychology to look beneath the more obvious clues. Her
work with other cases, particularly Jennifer Ryan, a young girl at
extreme odds with her mother, leads her into an examination of the
balance between the nature versus nurture debate. Why is there a
difference between normal adolescent psychology and the increasing
extreme levels of adolescent behavior? Why do some adolescents, like
her children, manifest similar periods of emotion and rebellion without
surpassing a level of violence and psychological illness that she sees
in her patients? As Molly delves deeper into these questions while
trying to protect Garrett, a killer shadows her and her family. Can she
solve the riddle of Garrett's mind before it is too late?
RISK FACTOR
is a refreshingly unusual thriller. As Molly looks into her cases,
comparing the extreme manifestations of her patients to similar though
less extreme adolescent moments she sees as a mother, she addresses the
questions without the kind of black and white dividing lines between
warring psychological camps that one often sees in the media whenever
an extreme case surfaces. Her patients are not monsters but neither
does she excuse their behavior. Molly has the ability to view the
family as a whole rather than merely exonerating or blaming the child
or the parent. Molly's quest to reach Garrett takes her into all the
pertinent issues of nature versus nurture as well as the changes in
society that seem to exacerbate the extreme levels of behavior. No
stone is left unturned. No easy answer is given. Instead, Molly's
ability to examine the amalgamation of the separate psychological
factors leads her to uncover clues the police are unable to see.
RISK FACTOR
is not the typical terrifying cookie cutter psychological thriller that
sensationalizes the most twisted horrifying crime into an almost
horror-like scenario with a resolution that reads almost like a
simplistic exaggerated caricature. RISK
FACTOR is indeed a psychological thriller with its haunting
portrait of adolescence. Several twists and turns lead to an unexpected
resolution to the murder case, but the drawing power of this thriller
is the haunting web of intricate psychological threads. Through
fiction, RISK FACTOR
addresses some of the vital questions we all ask in attempts to prevent
incidents like Columbine or any of the other escalating scenarios we
see in today's media compared to that of earlier generations.
Psychiatrist Charles Atkins has a gift of being able to examine these
issues through fiction in a way that does not oversimplify nor resort
to the language of a psychological treatise or diagnostic manual. RISK FACTOR has a certain element
of creepiness, but presented in a more subtle way that I appreciated as
a reader. I found myself drawn more and more into this book precisely
for the combination of the fictional lightness of a thriller (as
compared to non-fiction) with just the right amount of depth to keep me
intrigued. Intellectually I found RISK
FACTOR even creepier at the end when I thought over what I had
just read. I have not read this author before this book but I will
definitely be reading more by him in the future. In RISK FACTOR, Charles Atkins puts
the psychological back into the psychological thriller.
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