THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides

Alicia Berenson is in a psychiatric institution after being convicted of killing her husband Gabriel.  Theo, the narrator, is a psychotherapist who obtains employment at the institution where Alicia is housed, so that he will have the opportunity to draw her out of her silence; she has not spoken since the murder six years ago.   Alicia’s diary entries are interspersed among the chapters narrated by Theo, in order to give the reader some of her background, since she is non-verbal.  Theo begins investigating the murder himself by talking to Alicia’s friends and assorted unsavory relatives.  On the home front, Theo discovers that his wife is having an affair.  Since character development in this novel is virtually non-existent, I had to wonder what was the point of this subplot.  Several people had warned me that the book had a twist at the end, and gradually I began to put two and two together.  I’m not saying that I figured it out exactly, but I guessed enough to make that twist pretty anti-climactic.  Psychological thrillers have become so popular that I think we are giving some of them more credit than they deserve.  This one in particular was definitely a disappointment.  Plus, the people who work at Alicia’s mental institution seem to be more wacko than the patients.  At best, they are unprofessional and incompetent.   The most annoying aspect of the novel, though, is that Alicia refuses to speak.  The author tries to draw an analogy to a Greek tragedy, but this comparison is a huge stretch.  I felt that Alicia’s silence was really just a ploy on the author’s part to allow the other pieces of the novel to fit together, and he wasn’t totally successful in that endeavor.  On the plus side, this book held my attention and was a fast read.  Best of all, it made me appreciate a really good thriller, which it is not.