Let me take this opportunity to apologize for posting so much about my hip problem lately. That’s not what you come here for, and I appreciate your patience. My most recent discovery has been that using crutches instead of a cane punishes my body a whole lot less, so I’m now in considerably less pain than I was. Thanks for the prayers.

As a reward, here’s a book review: Time Release, by Martin J. Smith.

It’s hard not to compare Time Release to Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels. Like the Delaware stories, this one centers on a psychologist summoned by a policeman friend to help him investigate a series of murders. But the differences are numerous too. The setting here is Pittsburgh and its grim environs, rather than Los Angeles, and Smith’s characters, psychologist Jim Christensen and detective Gary Downing, are a lot more damaged by life. Christensen is still recovering from the loss of his wife, on whom he “pulled the plug” after brain death, and Downing’s career has never recovered from the way he botched a drug poisoning case, reminiscent of the Tylenol murders. He lost his objectivity because one of the victims was his secret lover, something he has never shared with anyone.

Now the poisonings seem to have resumed after ten years. Downing thinks the surviving son of his chief suspect may have repressed memories that would help his case. Would Christensen talk to the young man and see?

Christensen reluctantly agrees, not realizing that in doing so he is putting his remaining family in mortal danger. Some secrets are almost too hard to face, and some people would kill the innocent rather than face them.

Time Release is an adequate thriller. I never thought that it soared, and the relentless grimness of the story wore me down a bit. Religion is not a major theme, but is always in the background. Christensen, who has become an atheist, takes a cheap shot at the Bible at one point, but he still prays when desperate, and we’re given no reason to think that’s a stupid thing to do.

The price of the book is low, and I didn’t hate it. Worth reading if you like this sort of thing. Cautions for language and adult themes.