Stephen White: Warning Signs

By MICHELLE HEWITSON

Here's another one from Stephen White, who was a clinical psychologist and whose protagonist Alan Gregory is ... a clinical psychologist. Gregory's latest client is a woman who wants him to advise on whether she should be worried about her kid and his mate having drawn up a "wouldn't it be cool to blow up" list, a la the Columbine High School massacre.

Actually, Gregory is the one who should be concerned. The list includes the name of his wife, a prosecutor-turned-defender in the case of a murdered district attorney.

Gregory is an empathetic sort of therapist. "Occasionally, I had days at work when I concluded that my patients had spent the previous evening conspiring ways to make me crazy." Well, you know what they say: you don't have to be crazy to treat kooks, but it sure helps.

There are kooks aplenty in Warning Signs and it rips along pretty well, except where White tries to persuade us that there are moral issues of patient/doctor confidentiality at stake. What it's all about really is a denouement involving loads of explosives and cop cars blowing up.

Little, Brown

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