The Analyst A Novel [Paperback]

Happy fifty third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death.Dr. Frederick Starks, a New York psychoanalyst, has just received a mysterious, threatening letter. Now he finds himself in the middle of a horrific game designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin. The rules: in two weeks, Starks must guess his tormentor’s identity. If Starks succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, Rumplestiltskin will destroy, one by one, fifty-two of Dr. Starks’ loved ones—unless the good doctor agrees to kill himself. In a blistering race against time, Starks’ is at the mercy of a psychopath’s devious game of vengeance. He must find a way to stop the madman—before he himself is driven mad. . . .John Katzenbachhas written seven previous novels: the Edgar Award-nominatedIn the Heat of the Summer, which was adapted for the screen asThe Mean Season; theNew York TimesbestsellerThe Traveler;Day of Reckoning;Just Cause, which was also made into a movie;The Shadow Man(another Edgar nominee);State of Mind,andHart’s War. Mr. Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter forThe Miami HeraldandMiami Newsand a featured writer for theHerald’s Tropicmagazine. He lives in western Massachusetts.Chapter One

I n the year he fully expected to die, he spent the majority of his fifty-third birthday as he did most other days, listening to people complain about their mothers. Thoughtless mothers, cruel mothers, sexually provocative mothers. Dead mothers who remained alive in their children’s minds. Living mothers, whom their children wanted to kill. Mr. Bishop, in particular, along with Miss Levy and the genuinely unlucky Roger Zimmerman, who shared his Upper West Side apartment and it seemed the entirety of both his waking life and his vivid dreams with a hypochondriac, manipulative, shrewish woman who seemed dedicated to nothing leslS(