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by Jilliane Hoffman
RT Rating: 
Category: MYSTERY
Publisher: VANGUARD
Published: May 2009
Type: Mystery (Suspense, Romantic)
» Book Review |
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A Schizophrenic Mind
JILLIANE HOFFMAN TAKES A RATIONAL LOOK AT INSANITY
Former florida prosecutor Jilliane Hoffman admits the research she conducted for Plea of Insanity (Apr., Vanguard), her new legal thriller, altered her perspective on schizophrenia and the insanity defense. "A lot of times you think that people can help themselves, but with this disease they're in the middle of a delusion," explains the Long Island, N.Y., native and St. John's law school graduate. "Reality to them is not like it is to the rest of us."
Though film adaptations of nonfiction books such as A Beautiful Mind and The Soloist delve into the psyche of those stricken with schizophrenia, sympathy often dissipates when the disease is used to justify a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense.
That's the situation in Hoffman's third novel. Young Miami prosecutor Julia Vacanti catches a career-making case: Surgeon David Marquette claims that delusions propelled him to kill his wife and three children, but authorities think it's a smokescreen. The proceedings take Julia on a harrowing personal journey into her past.
Hoffman had already encountered the disease by the time she moved to Florida in 1992 to become an assistant state attorney. She had a friend who had been devastated by her brother's paranoid schizophrenia. And the novel is reminiscent of the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who was found not guilty by reason of insanity after drowning her five children in 2001. "I thought the female reaction was so interesting," says Hoffman, who at the time was the regional legal adviser for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "No compassion whatsoever. People can't imagine being mentally in that place. I said the same thing."
But work on Plea of Insanity pushed Hoffman deeper into the delusional mind. For vacation reading she toted along the influential Surviving Schizophrenia, spoke with psychiatrists and visited a maximum-security forensic hospital for the criminally insane.
"I came out with more of a sense of sympathy toward people who are mentally ill," Hoffman says. "There is no cure, there's no prevention. They can't predict who's going to get it. I wanted to show a compassionate side and then show the evil side."
The book marks Hoffman's first new U.S. title since Putnam released her first two novels back to back in 2004 and '05. Since her publisher and editor were no longer with the company, she took this book to Vanguard and even rewrote and re-edited portions from the version that was released in Europe two years ago. Among the results: 221 fewer pages. "I rewrote probably about a third of it," she says. "Streamlined it, made it more focused on the court case. It's got a slightly different ending. It's almost a new book."
-- Diane Snyder |
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