To state the obvious, what gives a series legs is an interesting protagonist with a foible or two to whom readers can relate. And while most readers can’t relate to the idea of being a therapist, like Dr. Alan Gregory, the psychologist and protagonist of the series written by Denver-area author Stephen White, they can relate to his marital difficulties.
The idea of an imperfect spouse also hits home. What married person doesn’t, at one time or another, think he or she was short-changed? In the case of White’s new novel, “Dry Ice,” the imperfections are writ large, because Alan’s wife, Lauren Crowder, not only suffers from MS, she also is fighting depression, a disease that evokes far less sympathy than any other and through which both spouses have to suffer. Furthermore, Lauren has ignored Alan’s pleas to wait and is pregnant with another child.
As “Dry Ice” (the 15th novel in the series) opens, Alan does his share of suffering, tiptoeing around a high-maintenance wife and trying to drum up business after a high-profile disaster for his business – a client who killed himself on national TV, in last year’s “Kill Me.”
Fortunately, neither the reader nor Alan has much time to be distracted by the doctor’s self-pity because Michael McClelland, a one-time meteorologist who became a hunted killer, has escaped from a mental institution and is intent on exacting retribution from everyone who helped get him incarcerated.
A dark voice from the past
That list includes Boulder psychologist Gregory and his prosecutor wife. Long-time readers will recall that McClelland is the crazy guy who almost took out Gregory, his wife and Gregory’s best friend, Sam, a cop, in the first book of this series, “Privileged Information,” and who actually managed to kill a member of Gregory’s family.
One of the ways McClelland plans to torture the good doctor is with the fact that he knows of Gregory’s deepest, darkest secret. And if marital problems, business instability and a killer on the loose aren’t enough to throw Gregory off his game, there’s the fact that he is the prime suspect in the murder of one of his new patients, who was found on one of his neighbors’ lawn. Worse, the police also are looking to him for explanations about the disappearance of a witness in one of Lauren’s cases. Pretty soon, both Gregory and Detective Sam Purdy begin to wonder who else besides McClellan has it in for Alan.
The pairing of McClelland and Gregory ranks up there with other entertaining matchups: Starling and Lector, Holmes and Moriarity. Having only recently been introduced to the series but having had a chance to go back and read a few of the earlier novels, I think it’s safe to say that “Dry Ice” isn’t an aberration. All of the Gregory books are terrific thrillers, guaranteed to keep readers glued to their seats.
White is a writer of the first order, ranking right up there with Thomas Harris, Dan Simmons, Lee Child and the rest of our century’s top-notch thriller writers.
Dorman T. Shindler is a freelancer from Missouri.
—————————————-
Dry Ice
By Stephen White
Dutton, 416 pages, $25.95
