SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAY: INTROS/TEASERS – “EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by A Daily Rhythm.

Today I am excited to share excerpts from one of my new downloads:  Every Fifteen Minutes, by Lisa Scottoline.

 

 

 

Intro:  I’m a sociopath.  I look normal, but I’m not.  I’m smarter, better, and freer, because I’m not bound by rules, law, emotion, or regard for you.

I can read you almost immediately, get your number right away, and push your buttons to make you do whatever I want.  I don’t really like you, but I’m so good at acting as if I do that it’s basically the same thing.  To you.

I fool you.

I fool everybody.

I’ve read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried.  One out of twenty-four people is 4 percent of the population, and that’s a lot of sociopaths.  Anorexics are 3 percent, and everybody talks about them.  Schizophrenics are only 1 percent, but they get all the press.  No one’s paying any attention to sociopaths, or they think we’re all killers, which is a misconception.

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Teaser:  Eric hustled down the hospital corridor, followed by two medical students on their psych rotation, a female and a male talking among themselves.  He felt confident that he could protect them, and himself, without a gun. (p. 4).

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Blurb:  Dr. Eric Parrish is the Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at Havemeyer General Hospital outside of Philadelphia. Recently separated from his wife Alice, he is doing his best as a single Dad to his seven-year-old daughter Hannah. His work seems to be going better than his home life, however. His unit at the hospital has just been named number two in the country and Eric has a devoted staff of doctors and nurses who are as caring as Eric is. But when he takes on a new patient, Eric’s entire world begins to crumble. Seventeen-year-old Max has a terminally ill grandmother and is having trouble handling it. That, plus his OCD and violent thoughts about a girl he likes makes Max a high risk patient. Max can’t turn off the mental rituals he needs to perform every fifteen minutes that keep him calm. With the pressure mounting, Max just might reach the breaking point. When the girl is found murdered, Max is nowhere to be found. Worried about Max, Eric goes looking for him and puts himself in danger of being seen as a “person of interest” himself. Next, one of his own staff turns on him in a trumped up charge of sexual harassment. Is this chaos all random? Or is someone systematically trying to destroy Eric’s life? New York Times best selling author Lisa Scottoline’s visceral thriller, Every Fifteen Minutes, brings you into the grip of a true sociopath and shows you how, in the quest to survive such ruthlessness, every minute counts.

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What do you think?  Does it grab you?  Would you keep reading?

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