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EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES (AUDIO)
by Lisa Scottoline, read by George Newbern
Macmillan Audio, April 2015
Unabridged pages
$39.99
ISBN: 1427252416


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Dr. Eric Parrish, chief of the psychiatric unit at Havemeyer General Hospital outside Philadelphia, is having a really, really bad week. He's getting divorced from his wife and is in a custody battle, he's falsely accused of sexual harassment at work, and a young patient with OCD is spiraling out of control. On top of all that, a sociopath, whose point of view we get in brief chapters, seems to want to bring Parrish down even more. And this is only the beginning of this very bad week. With each day, the troubles mount and Parrish slides deeper and deeper into trouble, about to lose everything, from his young daughter to his career.

Every fifteen minutes refers to Parrish's young patient, Max, a teenager with an unhealthy, even obsessive, crush—and an anxiety disorder that has him repeating a certain ritual every fifteen minutes in order to calm himself. Parrish's treatment of Max will put his own life in danger, however. Scottoline does throw in many red herrings, as well as some interesting twists and turns.

But the story is not without flaws. You wonder how Parrish, a supposedly intelligent man, can sometimes act so stupidly. Even the most squeaky-clean person would know not to talk to police without a lawyer - even more so when murder is involved.

While George Newbern (from "Father of the Bride" and "Scandal") does a good job narrating the story, the audiobook only highlights the book's biggest problems: The story starts off slowly and Scottoline tends to overexplain much. There's a lot of detail about psychiatric diagnoses, medications and their side effects, and points of law. These can easily be skimmed in a print book, but not so easily in an audiobook. At 11 discs and 13.5 hours, the audiobook drags quite a bit during the first half. The second half does pick up, but overall this still falls short of Scottoline's best efforts.

§ Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.

Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, June 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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