A Lethal Question: a thriller by psychiatrist Mark Rubinstein is likely to be devoured fast because it’s old-fashioned blood-and-guts suspenseful, and because it answers an inner call for simple and satisfactory solutions that real life rarely provides. It recalls mob violence pulp fiction, though its italicized passages of inner thoughts suggest topics of psychological interest: namely, can we ever imagine how a chance remark can totally upend our existence and threaten our life and the lives of our loved ones? Can we ever truly conceive of having to assume another identity where we would have to give up forever and fast our name, family, friends, home, bank account, birth and marriage certificates, school records, professional associations, pets? In an age of high-tech crime, privacy theft, and misused artificial intelligence, such questions take on unimaginable portent. But it’s not the LETHAL question of Rubinstein’s title. THAT refers to a chance remark that gets the action going.
Rubinstein, a psychiatrist and award-winning novelist, seems to have had a good time creating Dr. Bill Madrian, a psychiatrist whom he follows in the third-person present tense. In his mid-30s Bill’s a good guy. He still makes his living doing one-on-one therapy, but it’s a lonely life. His beloved fiance has died and he’s all business.
Even though readers know that what’s said to a doctor is confidential, in the rough-and-tumble world of the mafia, confidentiality is top of the code. And so it happens that one day as Bill is talking with a new patient, Alex Bronzi, who picked him out of a phone book. Bronzi it turns out, is the playboy son of a leading Albanian mob boss in the city. During the session the guy suddenly blurts out -“Hey, Doc, you wanna know who clipped Boris Levenko?” A three-man bloody hit on the Odessa mob in Brooklyn has been front-page news for the last few days. The Albanians are suspected, and they, Bill discovers, are second in power worldwide only to the Russians. Incidentally, Bill also discovers that the Albanian mob, has spread from the Bronx to Queens to Westchester, and now has “a presence in Connecticut, mostly in restaurants and the companies that service them”
No, Bill’s not interested in Alex’s question, which is repeated a bit too often, but it’s out there and there’s no doubt that Alex’s father, and a mobster on the move, is going to see the check that Alex drew to pay Bill. And there’s no doubt Papa Bronzi’s gonna get the word out there: rub out this Madrian guy. Now.
Bill speaks privately to his savvy brother-in-law, a lawyer, who has an unexplained relationship with a character called“Rami” – one name only - who may have some ideas about what Bill should do to avoid the Mafia finding him. Indeed the mysterious Rami does have ideas, including Bill getting rid of, immediately, his phone, credit cards, other identifying devices, and, if this fails, to consider something like a witness-protection program. Who or what is Rami? Who knows! And what will happen to a romantic relationship Bill has begun with the lovely librarian Elena Lauria, who is renting a downstairs apartment at a secret hideaway Bill has been referred to? Of course, she’s dragged into Bill’s horror show, but – how convenient, she’s an expert in martial arts. Will they stay together? Who knows! As the last line of the book has it “Only time will tell.”
No great prose here, or memorable characters, but the story’s a neat diversion; the setting’s authentic Manhattan; and the timely updates on the mafia disturbingly provocative.
