The Promise of a Lie

February 9, 2004
Roughan (The Up and Comer
) delivers a classic frame-up story, cleverly embellished and stocked with well-drawn albeit familiar genre characters (the sharply observant narrator, the black widow seductress, the bad cop and the less-bad cop) in his second slick page-turner. Narrator David Remler is a successful New York psychologist and the author of a book that explains how upstanding citizens can sometimes commit unspeakable crimes. He inadvertently launched his book onto the bestseller lists when he gave expert testimony in the trial of a rabbi accused of murdering his mistress; jurors cited his testimony as crucial to their decision to convict. Otherwise, we're told, they never would have imagined that a man of the cloth could do anything so horrible (perhaps this was written before the news broke about the recent scandal in the Roman Catholic Church). Still, the setup is clear and the plot full of satisfying poetic justice. Remler, a fine, sympathetic, kind and educated man who has profited from showing the world that anyone is capable of performing terrible deeds at any time, soon finds himself on the point of his own sword. He's accused of murder. His alibi stinks. A sticky web of circumstantial evidence ensnares him, and we watch as Remler's lawyers try to cut him loose. The novel is smoothly written, briskly paced and nicely constructed, with surprises that are genuinely startling. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.

March 1, 2004
Psychologist David Remler has been framed for the murder of a Wall Street venture capitalist by a patient calling herself Samantha Kent, a wife so terrified to leave her abusive husband that she kills him instead. But then the real (and grieving) Samantha shows up, and the terrified patient who claims to be Samantha disappears, leaving Remler with his life on the line. Although his fate is in the hands of a brilliant defense team, all the incriminating evidence points to Remler. With stick-thin secondary characters, a far-from-original situation (a doctor who gets emotionally involved with a manipulative patient), and a plot that initially hinges on the protagonist's unbelievably stupid actions (e.g., his failure to call the cops when informed of a murder by a person he suspects is now committing suicide), Roughan's second novel (after The Up and Comer) has a lot to overcome. That it does-in fact, it becomes an engrossing read that's hard to put down-results primarily from a gripping courtroom battle that consumes more than half the story. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2004
David Remler, a successful and talented psychologist, takes on a new patient. Samantha Kent is the beautiful, troubled wife of a Wall Street businessman; she is afraid of him and sometimes even feels like she wants to kill him. Then, early one morning, Remler gets a distressed phone call that leads him to three rather unsettling discoveries. One, Sam Kent's husband is dead: murdered. Two, the woman he knew as Sam Kent is not the murdered man's wife. And three, Remler is being framed for murder. Roughan's second novel (after " The Up and Comer" , 2001) is compulsively readable: sharply drawn characters, dialogue that seems effortlessly realistic, and a solid, suspenseful story. The author doesn't write with any special flair, but that's OK: this story doesn't need any. A smart, thoroughly engaging thriller. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)