Multiple Wounds

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A high conceptan investigation of a murder suspect who exhibits disassociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities, in the form of classical Greek deitiesgets only mediocre treatment in this ambitious but implausible police procedural set in San Diego. Homicide detective Orson Cheever meets the volatile Helen Troyaka Holly, Caitlin, Cronos, Eris, Eurydice, Hygeia, the Maenads, the Moirae, Nemesis and Pandoraat a downtown gallery whose owner has been found stabbed to death. Helen, a likely suspect or possible eyewitness, becomes an object of fascination to Cheever when she exhibits stigmata, crying tears of blood, then a source of need and fulfillment when she adopts the personality of his long-dead daughter. Cheever falls in love not with Helen, however, but with her psychiatrist, Rachel Stern, as cop and shrink begin to piece together the crimesfurther killings have followedand Helen herself. This is Russell's most mature novel, tackling the issue of suffering in its many guisesincluding the breast cancer that strikes Rachelbut it isn't his best. Characters can be gimmicky and the dialogue trite. The murder scenario, moreover, seems almost tacked on to the novel's central mystery of Helen's psychosis. And that illness is so outlandish as to strain belief, especially in scenes like the one where Helen and Cheever go to a restaurant and Helen, shuffling frantically between personalities, orders for several of them. "The waitress repeated the orders in an uncertain voice. `The lady would like an albacore melt, a very rare New York steak, a peanut butter and jelly, a lamb salad and the chicken fajitas. And the gentleman wants coffee. Regular or decaf?'" Russell's last two books were comic crime yarns (The Fat Innkeeper, 1995, etc.); it's in humor that his heart and his talent seem to thrive, and he should consider returning to it forthwith. (July)

Kirkus Reviews

The leading witnesses (or are they the leading suspects?) to gallery owner Bonnie Gill's murder are the weirdest bunch that veteran San Diego cop Orson Cheever has ever interviewed—and they're all living inside the self of Bonnie's client, sculptor Holly Troy. Holly, christened Helen Troy by her classicist father, has disassociative identity disorder, and Cheever has his hands full just juggling her multiple personalities: passive Holly, childlike Caitlin, angry male Cronos, sexy Eris, melancholy Eurydice, painfully empathic Hygeia, vengeful Nemesis, the wildly energetic Maenads, the intuitive Moirae, and Pandora, the gatekeeper and guide to all the others. (In one virtuoso scene, Cheever takes Holly out to lunch and watches as she orders, in rapid succession, an albacore melt, a rare steak, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, lamb salad, chicken fajitas, and artichoke heart pizza.) Clearly Holly has armored herself with this impressive roster of alters in response to a harrowing trauma, and it's no criticism of Russell to say that just as the other suspects, with only one personality apiece, can't hope to compete with Holly's brilliantly evoked Greek Chorus, her troubled past steals the limelight from Bonnie's present-day murder.

A tour de force less reminiscent of Russell's recent pair of farces about mayhem at the Hotel California than of his dark debut novel, No Sign of Murder (1991).