Too Rich and Too Thin: Not an Autobiography by Barbara DeShong

Too Rich and Too Thin: Not an Autobiography by Barbara DeShong. September 2009. Echelon Press. Pb. 372 pp. ISBN #: 9781590806418.

Dr. Jessica LaFave is a psychotherapist who normally does a great job of helping the people by profiling killers being sought by the law. But lately, the hard-core cops think she’s gone too far and are beginning to doubt her abilities. Her psychotherapist husband was found dead and it was tossed off by the police as a drunken accident, with the added humiliation to Jessica of some items found in his possession that hint of unfaithfulness. But Jessica doesn’t doubt her late husband at all and instead believes he knew something from one of his clients that was too dangerous to know and so brought on his own innocent demise.

Now Jessica is asked to help with profiling the killer of Bernice Jackson, an author who turns “sacred” Texas history into racy novels and movies that border on porn. It turns out that Bernice was once a patient of her late husband right around the time of his death. So Jessica now begins probing into Bernice’s world, the world of a drugged son frequently humiliated by his father, a daughter who might be called an air-head were it not for her over-eating binges designed to remove her from her dysfunctional family, Jessica’s lawyer friend who sticks by her while always threatening to remove himself from her crazed ideas and plots, and more.

The tone is always light and bizarre. The characters are multiple and their conversation frequently meandering into what seems like nowhere but actually makes the reader pay attention to catch the riddle-like sparks of gold that will lead to the eventual capture of the real killer of Bernice Jackson and David LaFave! Definitely a different, novel approach to mysteries!