The Promise Of A Lie

By the author of The Up and Comer, this superbly paced, hip, Hitchcockian thriller centers on a psychiatrist framed for murder by his patient.

Dr. David Remler is a 38-year-old Manhattan psychologist. He's also the author of a bestselling book that explores the fragile line between rational and irrational behavior. He wrote it soon after his wife was killed in a car accident. One afternoon, he takes on a new patient, Samantha Kent, a beautiful woman trapped in a relationship with an abusive, controlling husband. During their sessions, Remler develops more than professional feelings for Samantha. Then, late one night, she calls to say she killed her husband, and intimates she may kill herself. Remler arrives at his patient's home to find a dead man, but no one else. To skeptical police who believe he is the killer, his story doesn't add up. For starters, Samantha Kent is alive and well and looks nothing like the patient who confessed all to him. Remler has been set up- but why? And why, after a trial in which Remler fights for his life, does his adversary keep dogging him, maneuvering him into a position where yet another murder can be committed with impunity. With a Chinese-Box plot that evokes Gaslight and the best of Hitchcock, this is the story of the ultimate set-up, pitting a master manipulator against an expert in mind games- where everything is at stake.