MEDEA'S CURSE
Anne Buist
Text, $29.99
Dr Natalie King is a forensic psychiatrist who works with the victims and perpetrators of violent crimes involving children. She is involved with the case of a mother who is believed to have killed three of her own children; and another in which a father may have killed two of his daughters.
Dr Natalie does not fit the mould. She rides a powerful motorbike, is outspoken, bipolar, has assaulted a crown prosecutor and is at war with one of her more senior colleagues over their wildly differing diagnoses.
She also plays in a rock band, has a thing for inappropriate behaviour with married men, particularly sexy Irish-accented Crown Prosecutor Liam O'Shea, with whom she has to work. Oh, and she isn't keen on taking the medication that keeps her on the straight and narrow. She says she no longer "experiences surges of irrational anger".
You suspect author Anne Buist expects Natalie to be seen as endearingly kooky; instead she's just frightening. If anyone like her is working in the medical profession then there is reason to be very scared.
But it is Natalie who is frightened right now. Someone is stalking her; she's receiving anonymous threatening notes and believes that a stranger is lurking outside her house. Or maybe she's forgotten her meds again. Although she could hardly be imagining a written note that says, "I know where you live".
Natalie suspects a patient could be involved and there are some cracking candidates, including Georgia Latimer, charged with multiple child killings – all of them her own.
This book has attracted media attention, primarily because Buist is the wife of Graeme Simsion, whose breakout 2013 novel The Rosie Project, was a worldwide bestseller. And there's the fact that Buist's previous novels, and novellas, were on the risque side of the spectrum.
Buist is herself a leading perinatal psychiatrist, and much of the book is based on her real-life experiences. She has also published scholarly works.
Buist's credentials are beyond impressive. She's professor/director of women's mental health at the University of Melbourne. She's a clinician, teacher and researcher in the area of post and antenatal mental health disorders: depression, anxiety, psychosis and attachment disorders and once ran the Australia-wide beyondblue PND program.
She knows her stuff. None of which, unfortunately, helps shift the rather large elephant in the room; the fact is that this "psychological thriller" is actually rather boring. Rather than edge-of-the seat mystery I found myself baffled by all the psychoanalytical gobbledygook.
"From a diagnostic point of view," says Natalie, "Georgia presents some interesting possibilities. The differential diagnoses to consider are Dissociative Identity Disorder – D.I.D. – and personality disorder, Cluster B."
So far, so baffling. But there is more just a couple of pages later. "Dr King, could it be that she decompensates and that these other personalities come out with Professor Wadhwa because he is a male?"
These excursions into medical speak are distracting enough, but Buist also briefly introduces characters and then expects us to identify them by their first names dozens of pages on. There is an assumption, too, that we know much more about multiple personality disorder than I do (or care to).
It occurs to me that I may be the wrong demographic for this book. I also found it impossible to finish Gillian Flynn's worldwide best-seller Gone Girl. That said, it will be interesting to see how many readers have the patience to churn through the medical jargon to reach the thrills.
