Ponder: Hello Again

Having completed the Silver Springs Series by Brenda Novak, I forged ahead to weave my way through the Dr. Talbot Chronicles by the same author. I had started the first two in the psychological thriller series in January and reviewed them in my post for 1/14/20, giving them both three stars translating to Better than average; not a waste of time. Hello Again ©2017 also earns a middle of the road 3 star rating. It was a page turner and had a twist at the end. A sudden plot twist in a book always pleases me – whether I  see it coming and enjoy being surprised (type 1) or figure it out before the reveal and get to feel clever (type 2). I suppose there is the middle ground where the twist was so obvious it feels trite (type 3). Hello Again had the plot twist of type 2.

Hello Again has familiar characters. Psychiatrist Dr. Evelyn Talbot and law enforcement state trooper Sergeant Ben Murphy, whose nickname Amarok came from the Inuktitut word for “wolf”, are the key characters who act out the drama and danger within the cold harsh environment of Hilltop, Alaska. A new inmate, Lyman Bishop, arrives at the Hanover House prison for the criminally insane. Dr. Talbot is convinced he is guilty of the crimes for which he is convicted but he is released to the public on a legal technicality. Combine a killer on the loose with a few lobotomies and the book is a page turner. There is enough romance sprinkled throughout to be fun without being so abundant as to be nauseatingly vapid. What I like best about this series, though, is the running analysis of the criminals' personalities, motives, and  thinking patterns. A quote at the beginning of the book is food for thought.

The psychopath and the hero may be twigs on the same genetic branch.

—David T. Likken (sic?)

Curious, and thinking that Brenda Novak had done research for her novel,  I looked up that quoted author and found a book titled  The Antisocial Personalities ©1995 by David T. Lykken, spelled with a "y" vs an"i". The misspelled author's name does give me a bit of pause as to the thoroughness of Novak's research; however, perhaps it could be merely editing oversight. A description of the book per Amazon reads:

This volume presents a scholarly analysis of psychopathic and sociopathic personalities and the conditions that give rise to them. In so doing, it offers a coherent theoretical and developmental analysis of socialization and its vicissitudes, and of the role played in socialization by the crime-relevant genetic traits of the child and the skills and limitations of the primary socializing agents, the parents.

Well, that description is certainly a mouthful and sounds much too deep for pleasure reading for me. I preferred to glean a watered down version in an easy-to-read, suspenseful, Brenda Novak novel. I have two more books to read in this series and I will finish it out. They are waiting in my Kindle downloads. 

I do however recommend reading the previous books in the chronicles to better understand some plot points. Earlier novels explain how Dr. Evelyn Talbot's harrowing experience in her teen years drove her to this line of dark work, driving her to stubbornly plunge forward despite continual background threats to her life.