Every Fifteen Minutes

Lisa Scottoline

Apr 2015 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

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.

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?

Ratings and reviews

I work in mental health, and the main character, Dr Parish, does things that are so against the ethical guidelines (and that are also bad decisions in general) that it was difficult to suspend by disbelief and keep reading. The chapters narrated by the sociopath in question are very well written, but don't really add to the overall story. I really wanted to like this novel, but it really fell apart at the end for me. When the sociopath is revealed, their motivation for everything just didn't ring true for me, as either a reader or a mental health professional. It's just okay.

This book was suck a great summer read. I found this book in an Airport's book section during Spring Break and decided to buy it on my phone. I decided I wanted the book to be my summer read and I'm glad I did. This book was marvelous. I loved every part. I've always been into topics like mental health, psychiatrists, psychopaths/sociopaths and this book gave me it. Would totally recommend to anyone.

Disappointed !! Maybe it's because I work in the field....but there is no way this guy could be a psychiatrist/psychologist and one who is the head of a department...breaching so many ethics. Not believable. Hard to relate to. Too bad...it was my first time reading this author.

About the author

LISA SCOTTOLINE is a New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of many novels. She has 30 million copies of her books in print in the United States, and she has been published in thirty-five countries. She has served as the president of Mystery Writers of America, and her thrillers have been optioned for television and film. She also writes a weekly humor column with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and those critically acclaimed stories have been adapted into a series of memoirs, the first of which is entitled, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets.