Hugo Wilcken's first novel, The Execution—a taut, psychological mystery about an average person who commits an accidental murder—got the kind of rave reviews authors dream of: He was compared to Camus and Hitchcock. Now, in his second novel, The Reflection, the comparisons seem even more appropriate: It's a smart, creepy, steadily absorbing mystery about an average law-abiding citizen who finds himself inexplicably caught up in a case of mistaken identities—with one of his own patients. When psychiatrist David Manne is asked by a friend who's a New York City Police detective to consult on an unusual case, he finds himself being asked to evaluate a criminal who's the exact opposite of himself—an uneducated laborer from the Midwest who seems overwhelmed by modern day Manhattan circa 1948. But when that laborer tells David that he's not who the police say he is, David slowly begins to believe it may be true Unable to stop himself, David begins to look into how the police handle the man, and the hospital they take him to . . . and begins to suspect that the man is caught up in some kind of secret governmental medical testing. Realizing he's got to rescue his patient, David quickly finds himself battling forces that seem to be even bigger than he suspected, and that now have him in their sights. When he suddenly finds himself caught with a patient's i.d. papers on him, he decides on a risky course that seems his only way out: To change his identity, and enter even deeper into the conspiracy, if he's to find out how to escape it. Written in relentlessly probing prose with a delicious plot complication seemingly on every page, this is one of the most thought-provoking, chilling, and suspenseful novels you'll ever read.
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It's 1940s Manhattan and psychiatrist David Manne is called out by the police to diagnosis a violent husband and subsequently has the suspect, Mr Esterhazy, committed. It doesn't sit well with Manne who finds himself checking Esterhazy, who maintains his name is Smith, out of the institute he's been sent to and bringing him into his home. After a series of tumultuous events Manne finds himself living as Smith - or maybe he was Smith all along?
Clues and echoes reverberate as we dive into this möbius strip of a book. It's a credit to Wilcken that he manages to maintain the conceit throughout the book. It's an incredulous plot that should strain believability but on the page it turns into an engrossing puzzle that leaves the heavy lifting to the reader. Pay attention.
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