REVIEW: EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES, BY LISA SCOTTOLINE

 

 

Dr. Eric Parrish, Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at Havemeyer Hospital in Philadelphia, is enjoying the fruits of his labor at work. His hospital has even earned an award for its performance, which many credit him for.

His personal life, however, is at an all-time low. His wife Caitlyn has left him, and she is doing sneaky things with regard to his visitation with their daughter Hannah. Eric realizes that she has a new boyfriend, and this probably explains a lot about her new attitude.

Then Eric is abruptly brought into the case of a seventeen-year-old boy named Max, who is suffering from depression and possibly other issues due to his grandmother’s impending death.

In treating Max, Eric soon learns of the boy’s obsessions, part of his OCD, which center on a young girl named Renee.

Suddenly everything is seemingly out of control for Eric, as Max goes missing after his grandmother’s death, and the young woman Renee has been found murdered. And at the hospital, a young medical student named Kristine has filed sexual harassment charges against him, which stuns Eric, since she has been coming on to him…and he has shut her down. Are these events random, or is someone pulling the strings? What is the end game?

Every Fifteen Minutes was a fast-paced suspense story narrated in Eric’s first person voice, and alternately narrated by an unidentified sociopath. The sociopath also uses the first person voice, and calls himself/herself a “sociopath” and outlines a vague plan to take Eric down. Who is this unidentified sociopath and why is he or she fixated on Eric?

I could not read this book fast enough, eager to find out who had done what. I had suspicions that the “puppeteer” had to be a colleague. But at the very end, a stunning reveal left me reeling. 5 stars.