Ponder: Hanover House & Her Darkest Nightmare

Since I am behind in my posts about books I have read in 2019, I continue to double up on the titles. Having liked the author Brenda Novak's ten-book romance Whiskey Creek Series (5/5/18) I started on her psychological thriller series called the Dr. Evelyn Talbot Chronicles. There are four books in this series all of which earned five stars on Amazon.

The kickoff novella to the Dr. Evelyn Talbot Chronicles is titled Hanover House ©2015 and sets the groundwork and background. Evelyn had been tortured by her high school boyfriend and left for dead. She survived and he was never apprehended nor imprisoned. She sets her life goal to understanding the psychopathic mind. How could someone she was so close to her turn on her and why? Getting her medical degree she sets up a maximum security facility in the remote and harsh environment of Hilltop Alaska, naming the medical health center Hanover House. 

Residents of the area are not welcoming because they are wary of having serial killers living near to them. Evelyn has trust issues and an education gap with the locals making it difficult for her to form social ties. Consequently she gets little relief from her dangerous and stressful work. Added to the mix is the onerous possibility that her murderous ex-boyfriend may want to seek her out and finish the job he started. This thriller has lots of suspense. It seems as if everyone is against her, even the uncooperative and howling weather. A local Alaskan State Trooper, Sergeant Amarok, reluctantly assists her out of duty. Evelyn's past trauma precludes romance between them playing a large role in this book. I give Hanover House three stars – Better than average; not a waste of time. 

The first full novel in Brenda Novak's Dr. Evelyn Talbot Chronicles is Her Darkest Nightmare ©2016. The characters with whom she interacts have already been established in the novella: the doctors who are her argumentative colleagues, her parents who fret for her safety, and the capable Alaska State Trooper who assists despite his dissatisfaction of having a facility of serial killers in his territory. In this particular novel, a dismembered arm from a woman has been eerily placed in Dr. Talbot's bed. The corpse of the women is later discovered and her identity sought. The scenes have shock value in their occurrence, but gratefully and mercifully, they are not described in gruesome detail for the reader. The pursuit scenes are harrowing, and the thriller is certainly a page turner. But I most enjoy the passages involving insight and analysis of the mental features of a psychopathic serial killer.

Probing the mind of a psychopath and reveals certain typical features. One passage (chapter 12) where Dr. Talbot is in a conversation with a patient reads:

Like Ted [Bundy] and so many other psychopaths, Hugo [patient] didn't seem to keep track of the things he said even a few minutes before and often contradicted himself. Most people overlooked these seemingly inconsequential slips, probably because they didn't deal with enough psychopaths to draw the correlation. But his kind of sloppy speech further proved that a psychopath's brain was not wired like a normal person's. Although the right hemisphere usually controlled speech, psychopaths were bilateral, meaning both sides of the brain were involved. They weren't the only ones – people who stuttered or had dyslexia were bilateral, too...

Many of the psychopaths appear charming and congenial on the surface, almost charismatic with those they encountered. They worm their way into their contacts's good graces, not by the unique qualities of their own personality, but rather by their chameleon ability to mirror the future victims' own personalities back at them. In general people tend to feel comfortable and bond with a person with whom they feel they have a lot in common. This scenario reminds me of the poem The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt published in 1828. 

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly;

The title Her Darkest Nightmare again hearkens back to her tortured and betraying high school experience. Since he has never been apprehended and jailed, the threat always looms that her ex-boyfriend may be involved and is leaving clues for her. Could it be him wanting to finish the job or merely taking delight in terrorizing her. Could it be that another, equally psychotic, perpetrator is involved? The suspense and action are excellent. I give Her Darkest Nightmare three stars – Better than average; not a waste of time. Because of a limited audience I feel it falls short of four stars. I enjoyed reading the book but no way would I go to movie made out of it. That is definitely not my cup of tea. My imagination is as graphic and as daring as I want to get.