There’s something unusual going on in fiction these days – plots featuring criminal psychiatrists. Is it because they make for formidable evil doers, masters of the mind who can easily manipulate people for personal or professional reasons? Of course, most doctors, as Lauren Rico’s engaging new novel Mirror Image shows, are devoted to ministering to needs, but when the exception kicks in, it can make for page-turning reading.
Rico knows how to craft an engrossing story. Not only has she done an impressive job researching several fields and making it seem as though she has experienced them, but she’s managed to ensure they all cohere, as divergent as they are – hospitals dealing with psychiatric emergencies, kayaking in a dangerous part of the Florida Everglades, Cuban cuisine, wilderness skills, the trials of family and friendship, not to mention the phenomenon of identical twins, the subject matter at the heart of Mirror Image.
Mary and Samantha, separated at birth and knowing nothing about the other’s existence, by sheer chance discover each other later in college. Though Mary, adopted, has led a life of privilege and Samantha barely survived foster homes, they bond immediately until Samantha dies in a kayaking accident in the Everglades. The twins were by then owners of a wilderness guide business.
The book opens with a prologue that takes place in The Nightmare, a dangerous swamp of snakes and alligators that connects the North and South Everglades. A ranger comes upon the body of a dead girl. And then sees her stagger toward him. It turns out, as the narrative gets underway, that the dead girl was Samantha, or Sam, and the girl who staggered toward the ranger was her twin. Barely alive, Mary is rushed to the Florida hospital, which is supported by her wealthy parents. She’s in trauma and can’t talk. Enter Dr. Jennifer Flores, a psychiatrist with a fine reputation. It’s said that she may be the one person who could talk with Mary because she herself was once an identical twin whose sister died from a Ferris wheel malfunction at the age of 15. And she had interned at the very hospital Mary’s in. The psychiatrists there who recommend Jenn are her former mentor Julian Braithwaite and the cold, arrogant director of the psychiatric division, David Kellogg. Ten years earlier, both of them threw Jenn under the bus when they turned down her plea to admit a troubled girl to the ER. Shortly after, the girl killed herself. Though Jenn was cleared, the director and her once-beloved mentor seriously damaged her with lies and fraud. In New York now, happily married – to a psychiatrist – Jenn still suffers from survivor guilt from the loss of her own twin, Jess. Still, duty calls. Little does she realize how involved she will get with Mary, who will trust her, and that she will pursue on her own an investigation into what happened to Mary’s twin, Sam, at birth.
There is a good deal here about adoptive parents whose deep love for their chosen child drives them to extreme behavior. Desperate people can do desperate things, as psychiatrists well know. It’s amazing how Rico keeps so much diversity in play, alternating chapters by time and place, sustaining curiosity by hinting at imminent complications in ensuing chapters and creating three-dimensional characters with ambiguous motives.
Lauren Rico is an accomplished classical musician specializing in the French horn. It’s said to be the most difficult and subtle brass instrument, blending with the whole orchestra in unusual harmony. The talent carries over.
