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Unhealthy Boundaries: A Story of Murder & the Internet |
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 Unhealthy BoundariesA Story of Murder & the Internet by Robert Tolins Dry Bones Press 205 pages, 2000 ISBN 11883938686 Reviewed by Lisa Eagleson-Roever Read another review by John A. Broussard, PhD Note: This review is from an Advance Reviewer's Copy (ARC). Changes may be made prior to publication. UNHEALTHY BOUNDARIES is about unhealthy relationships - between husbands and wives, employers and employees, friends and cyber pals. Massachusetts attorney Jason McMahon is wallowing in a flood of unhealthy relationships. He's on the rocks with his wife Alice; his housekeeper is a nervous wreck around him; he doesn't know how to talk to his kids; he's an alcoholic; and he's addicted to his on-line relationship with a woman from California whom he's never physically met. His cyber-relationship with Sharon Sommers is also crumbling and he clings to its ever-shrinking pieces as if grasping for planks of a lifeboat. Could his life get any worse? You betcha. When Sharon's mutilated body is found in the desert not far from her home, the police examine the files on her computer at the advice of her jealous husband, and find the cyber-sexy e-mails she and Jason have been exchanging. Did Jason travel all the way to Los Angeles to kill Sharon? Lt. Thomas Brandon of the Los Angeles Police Department certainly thinks so. But the evidence he has doesn't seem plausible, and both Jason and Alice realize he's being set up. But why? And by whom? In a wonderful twist, it's Alice (also an attorney) who comes to Jason's rescue. Her actions are a slyly offered reminder of what it means to fight for love - to fight to change an unhealthy relationship into a healthy one. Alice is anything but sentimental as a character, yet she fights to save Jason with the sweaty tenacity of a jackal. She doesn't like Jason, hasn't for a long time, but she loves him enough to want to save him at the risk of her own life. In saving him, she also saves herself, for her relationships with others are also rocky. She needs to drag them both up to higher ground and make a clean break with the past so they can start over. In the first half of the novel, Jason is the main character; in the second half of the novel, it's Alice. Jason's half of the novel delves into the relationships his addiction is shredding. Its style is part mystery, part romance, and part mainstream fiction. Alice's half approaches the same style as Clive Cussler's Shockwave. The transition is unexpected and jarring, as is the change in tone. I have high hopes for the final version, however. |
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