Caso clínico

In the spring of 2020, Graeme Macrae Burnet receives a letter from a stranger informing him of the existence of some notebooks that, according to him, could "be the basis of an interesting book". Intrigued, Macrae immerses himself in the material, dating from the 1960s, and discovers the story of a woman who, in London at the time, seems to harbor suspicions that her sister's suicide was encouraged by her psychiatrist, the famous therapist. A. Collins Braithwaite, "a contemporary of R. D. Laing and something of an enfant terrible of the antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s." Determined to discover the truth, the woman assumes a false identity, a new name, adopts a new personality, and goes to Braithwaite's office for therapy. Or, better, to "antitherapy". Thus begins a chase with Hitchcockian overtones, dotted with flashes of black humor, in which doctor and patient, narrator and character, hunter and hunted, are confused in a plot typical of the most classic noir.