The Objects of Their Obsessions

There's that problem, however, with Natalie Davis. He regards her resistance as a test he must overcome. To prove himself worthy of her love, he has broken into her apartment, killed her cat, shadowed her as if laws against stalking were meant only for lesser mortals. And it's Paul's job to determine if Craig is insane.

Their sessions in the interview room convince Paul that Craig is "extraordinarily gifted in assessing other peoples' vulnerabilities and motivations." He apparently is also nearly superhuman. He can repeatedly and effortlessly climb three-story buildings, easily hack into private computer files and break into buildings without breaking a sweat or leaving a trace. Plus, don't forget, he's rich enough to slip a timely bribe or two into certain willing palms.

While struggling to make sense of Craig's behavior, Paul also begins to wonder if his wife is having an affair. Abby, an attractive social worker several years younger than Paul, has lately acquired new, unsettling habits -- along with new makeup, new lingerie and unexplained absences from work.

Craig somehow gets wind of Paul's personal difficulties and, through a series of sinister machinations, sets out to ruin his interviewer. Or so it seems to Paul. But Paul can't prove anything, and no one, including Abby, believes him. Even Paul admits that his years of training have brought him to a "pinnacle of finely tuned paranoia." Has the "combat"-hardened therapist finally met his match?

While his story proceeds to a predictable, violent climax, Anscombe reliably offers up his customary insights of understanding and illuminating takes on the blindness of passion. But he does so in language that occasionally slides into cliché, such as the "jigsaw puzzle" of recent events in Paul's life that lands "with every piece in place." Or into clumsiness: When Paul smells his wife's shampooed hair, he feels "enveloped in the intimate miasma that surrounds a person."

Paul assembles those puzzle pieces at a pace that seems far too gradual for an ostensible novel of suspense. Having encountered few instances of breathless uncertainty or heart-racing passages that might have lent the book some sorely needed momentum, we are mostly left to plod along with Paul. It soon becomes clear that the story will end with a bang, and there's little doubt who will be left standing. At one point, after clues have accumulated all around him, Paul realizes that he "still didn't get it." Most readers will have gotten it long before. ·

Jabari Asim is deputy editor of Book World.