Mental Case

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Dr. Drang, an evil psychiatrist bent on the total mind control of his patients, knows his discovery will be worth millions on the international market. Brilliant, greedy, and sexually voracious, he's a monster armed with chemicals, apparently beyond the reach of the law. The novel opens as a stunning young woman enters a swank Manhattan jewelry store and tries on a diamond necklace. Without warning, she shoots the jeweler, a security guard, and a customer, then blows her brains out. Assigned to the case, ...
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bluehouse
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More About This Book

Overview

Dr. Drang, an evil psychiatrist bent on the total mind control of his patients, knows his discovery will be worth millions on the international market. Brilliant, greedy, and sexually voracious, he's a monster armed with chemicals, apparently beyond the reach of the law. The novel opens as a stunning young woman enters a swank Manhattan jewelry store and tries on a diamond necklace. Without warning, she shoots the jeweler, a security guard, and a customer, then blows her brains out. Assigned to the case, Lieutenant Ben Tolliver is shocked to learn the young woman's father is a prominent politician and a personal friend. The anguished parents implore Ben to find out what caused their beautiful, accomplished daughter to commit such a senseless crime, and he promises he will. As he investigates, murders even more bizarre occur, seemingly without motive. Ben's hunt enrages Dr. Drang, who vows to kill him. A deadly game of mutual stalking ensues, with detective and quarry each determined to destroy the other.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The hokiness that hallmarked Harvey's three previous Ben Tolliver, NYPD thrillers peaks in this fourth (after Flesh and Blood, 1994). Like a latter-day Sax Rohmer, the author stirs in ravenous rats, experiments on severed human brains, a beautiful woman-turned-sex-slave and a villain with the delicious name of Dr. Jonas Drang. Every bit the mad scientist, Drang, in his desire to transform the human brain and psyche, has been conducting illicit drug experiments on his psychiatric patients that have led to a high-profile attempted robbery and a series of random, motiveless murders in New York City. Tolliver is the cop investigating the crimes. Harvey's prose throughout remains bright and remarkably clean, no small feat given the gruesome nature of much of the action. While there's not much depth to the characters or themes, there is a certain deadpan charm to the sheer melodrama of it all; no doubt Dr. Fu Manchu is grinning in his grave. (Apr.)
Library Journal
Beth Whitacre, the beautiful and intelligent daughter of a wealthy and prominent citizen, goes for a walk one day. She enters a posh jewelry story, takes out a gun, shoots three people dead, and then shoots herself. Why? The mayor and D.A. want the answers. Intrepid investigator Ben Tolliver is sent out to find them. Ben finally stumbles across the trail of Dr. Jonas Drang, an evil genius the likes of whom has not been seen since the Emperor Ming in the old Flash Gordon movies-and about as believable too. In fact, all the characters in this latest Ben Tolliver book (Flesh & Blood, St. Martin's, 1994) are unbelievable. Tolliver is shot by poisoned bullets, his car is fire-bombed and melts, and this bozo walks, illegally, into Drang's dark, unlocked (in New York City?) house, with no back-up or radio contact and not even a flashlight. When Tolliver is caught, gassed by one of Drang's puppets, and tied to a chair, his escape method is bravado, snarls, and curses. Of course Drang must leave our hero alone to make his escape. Tolliver uses the old cut-the-ropes-with-broken-glass ploy. How do you do this without getting bloody fingers, hands, and wrists? If you like high camp, this is it.-Dawn L. Anderson, North Richland Hills P. L., Tex.,
George Needham
This strange amalgam of police procedural, anti-Prozac screed, and mad-scientist story concerns a beautiful young socialite who kills three people and then commits suicide in an exclusive Manhattan jewelry store. Asked by the woman's politically connected father to look into the bizarre case, NYPD detective Ben Tolliver discovers that the woman had a high level of an antidepressant in her system. Meanwhile, the mysterious Dr. Drang experiments with combining various pharmaceuticals to give him total mind control over his patients, one of whom he has turned into an assassin and another into his personal love slave. (As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.) Drang is completely amoral, unspeakably arrogant, and would have been a perfect role for the late Christopher Lee. Tolliver tracks the evil psychiatrist to his secret lair, and the inevitable showdown produces the expected results. This book is great Grand Guignolstyle fun, if the reader is careful not to take it too seriously.
Kirkus Reviews
The fourth case for Lt. Ben Tolliver, about linked murders in Manhattan, as Harvey attempts to upgrade his series begun with the overly predictable The Headsman (1991).

A beautiful, wealthy blond walks into a jewelry store, asks to see a $100,000 necklace, then shoots the jeweler, his security guard, a customer, and finally herself. Reviewing the store's videotape, Tolliver can't find anything to go on besides the woman's unearthly calmness. The medical examiner eventually finds a Prozac-like substance (fluoxetine) in her blood, though that's a mere mood-enhancer. Then there are two more mysterious murders in the Village, on two different nights, as a young man walks up to a visitor, then to an antiques dealer, and stabs each to death through the breastbone. Some yellow capsules found by one of the bodies points to the same Prozac-derivative. Though Tolliver runs into blind alleys for over half the novel, the reader is introduced to Dr. Jonas Drang, a psychiatrist with a secret cellar lab for research on psychopharmaceuticals who has whipped up a swell new antidepressant made from rats' brain cells—but can't get the dosage right. The drug boosts the taker's confidence hugely, granting an amazing calm, but also releases the aggressiveness inherent in Dr. Drang's outsized Norwegian rats, mammals second in intelligence only to monkeys. When he does get it right, he'll go to Switzerland (he's already buying a house there) and give Eli Lilly a run for its money. Fact is, Dr. Drang's real objective is a drug that will allow armies to build up cadres of superbly aggressive soldiers. When Tolliver eventually gets too close to Dr. Drang, the good doctor gets in touch with his Village stabber. This fails, but Tolliver at last winds up bound in Dr. Drang's black-out cellar, being eaten alive by hungry rats . . . .

Credible policework and fantasy sex give way to comic-book grue. Even so, a distinct series improvement.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312959951
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 3/28/1997
  • Series: Ben Tolliver Series
  • Format: Mass Market Paperback
  • Edition description: REPRINT
  • Pages: 346
  • Product dimensions: 4.23 (w) x 6.82 (h) x 0.79 (d)

Table of Contents

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