Denial

Keith Ablow has had a complicated public career in the years since, but his early Frank Clevenger novels are worth reading as taut forensic-psych thrillers. Denial is the first one, from 1997, and it puts the formula in place: Clevenger, a brilliant Boston forensic psychiatrist with his own substance-abuse issues, gets pulled into an investigation that looks like a homicide and turns out to involve more sophisticated psychological territory.

Ablow is at his best when he is writing the actual mechanics of forensic interviewing. The Clevenger scenes with subjects (witnesses, suspects, the families of victims) are observed with the precision you would expect from a working psychiatrist. The Boston neighborhoods are rendered with care. The case resolves in a way that is both fair and uncomfortable.

The Clevenger character is the weak link. Ablow leans on his protagonist's damaged-genius register a little too consistently, which thins the character over the long arc of the series. Three stars for the debut. Read on its own terms.