For more than twenty years, in nearly a score of bestselling crime novels, Stephen White's stories of Boulder psychologist Alan Gregory have captivated millions of readers. Now Compound Fractures provides a riveting last chapter to the series.
In Line of Fire, the tantalizing prelude to this final book, Dr. Gregory found himself assailed by danger from every direction as he struggled with circumstances beyond his control. Authorities were closing in on Alan and his friend Sam Purdy for their role in a woman's death years earlier. Alan was struggling to deal with the emotional collapse of his longtime friend Diane after she discovered evidence of her husband's infidelity.
By the end, Alan's personal life and his career were in danger of complete collapse.
But Line of Fire merely set the stage. In Compound Fractures, the explosive conclusion to the decades-long saga, Alan is forced to acknowledge that the perils that may bring him to his knees are not the dangers he recognizes, nor are they orchestrated by the nemesis he has long feared. Instead he is confronted by unexpected threats from unanticipated adversaries, and by intimate betrayal from those who have been closest to him. He is compelled to reconsider what he has long believed about trust and about love while he is trying to cope with overwhelming loss and grief.
To protect himself he must revisit the cruel ethical dilemma that turned his life upside down as a young psychologist. He has to judge whether the people reentering his life after long absences are friends or foes. He has to make sense of echoes of distant tragedies while he decides if there is anyone he can really trust. Mostly, as the clock ticks down, he must solve a deadly mystery in Eldorado Springs that has been brewing for over a decade.
At times full of pathos, at other times replete with White's distinctive wry humor, Compound Fractures delivers the entrancing characters, the suspense, the intricately plotted storylines, and the unexpected twists that readers have come to expect.
Compound Fractures promises to be a jaw-dropping and satisfying last act in White's beloved series.
Read an interview with White about ending the Alan Gregory series HERE.
Hank says: "Following the cliffhanger of Line of Fire, Compound Fractures completes the final story of Boulder psychologist Alan Gregory, who was introduced in 1991's Privileged Information. I was delighted to receive an advance copy, so that I could continue the gripping conclusion to a series that I've followed since the beginning. I thought the first two books were quite entertaining, but the third one, Higher Authority, convinced me that this series was going to be something remarkable, and it has only grown in complexity and sophistication. I read an interview with White, in which he mentioned that there's an awful lot going on in the last 100 pages, and he significantly revised them. On his recommendation, I plan to reread them when the finished book hits the shelves.
It would make no sense to read this book without at the very least reading Line of Fire, but it will be a much richer experience for readers who are familiar with the entire background. You could probably skip a few of the more tangential novels, like Kill Me and The Siege, but if you find White's storytelling as engaging as I have, you won't want to.
Compound Fractures ends on an inconclusive note (unless that's part of the revision), but after I put it down, I came to think it was quite appropriate. From the beginning, Alan Gregory's stories have always been about ethical ambiguity and paradoxical choices. "
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