Bought from Smith's at the corner of Valle Verde and Paseo Verde in Henderson, NV, yesterday.

It's long and it's a bit complex. I usually like that. This one had me a little stumped, though. The daughter in question was diagnosed as having Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder, a condition that some experts doubt actually exists. Penny is sixteen when she is found holding the murder weapon while the victim lay at her feet. She is immediately found guilty, but the question arises: was Penny aware of having committed murder, or did some other part of her personality take the lead?

To discover the truth, her mother calls on Dr. Mitchell McHugh, a psychiatrist, who cannot make up his mind whether Penny truly has DID or is faking it (and has faked it for years). Instead of following some kind of guidelines, he simply observes her and holds his conclusions until he feels they are inescapable.

I didn't feel that the methods used by this psychiatrist would have stood the test of real psychiatry, especially his calming of a wild patient in an institution. It all seemed a bit flaky to me. On the other hand, I find a lot of psychiatry flaky. Too much confidence in checklists, for example.

I felt the back-and-forth of is she or isn't she quite annoying, but the book compelling enough to finish.

Inside the box.