Dennis Palumbo – författare

A shooter takes deadly aim, and throws a city into panic

Psychologist Daniel Rinaldi is no stranger to trauma. A survivor of not one, but two attempts on his life by a deranged killer, the therapist also counsels trauma patients in his private practice, and contracts with the Pittsburgh Police to help victims of violent crime cope with their experience. When a sports mascot is gunned down mid-field by a sniper at a college football game he attends, Rinaldi becomes an accidental yet integral part of the investigation. To begin with, the victim in the costume is not the person who was supposed to be wearing it.

When the actual "Teasdale Tiger" hears the news, he suffers a crippling panic attack and calls on Rinaldi to talk him through it. From there, Rinaldi seems to be in all the wrong places at all the wrong times, as the sniper continues his killing spree. Meeting with resistance from members of the Pittsburgh Police force and taking dangerous risks in pursuit of the killer, Rinaldi puts his career and his life in harm''s way as he races to find a connection between the victims before the shooter strikes again.

Mirror Image, a complex, erotic novel of suspense, is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime, those who’ve survived an armed robbery or kidnapping but whose traumatic experience still haunts them.

Kevin Merrick, a college student and victim of an armed assault, is one of these people. A fragile, troubled kid desperate for a role model and a sense of identity, Kevin has begun dressing like Rinaldi, acting like him, mirroring his appearance. Before Daniel has a chance to work this through with his patient, he finds Kevin brutally murdered. Stunned, he and the police suspect that he, not Kevin, had been the intended target.

Feeling responsible, Rinaldi is determined to help find the killer, who’s begun leaving death threats for the psychologist. His journey takes him through a labyrinth of friends and colleagues, any one of whom may be the killer. It also includes an affair with a beautiful, free-spirited assistant district attorney with secrets of her own. And when Kevin’s identity as the estranged son of a Bill Gates-like biotech giant is revealed, the investigation of his murder turns into a national story, even as another person turns up dead.

It has been nearly a year since psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, a trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police, helped unravel a baffling murder, and now he finds himself drawn into another case. In the midst of a blistering summer heat wave, a daring bank robbery has gone horribly wrong, resulting in the deaths of all the hostages except one, Treva Williams, and Rinaldi is called in to treat the young woman.

However, what seemed a simple, straightforward robbery soon explodes into a series of events that plunge Rinaldi and the investigating officers, Sergeant Harry Polk and Detective Eleanor Lowrey, into a vortex of mistaken identity and kidnapping.

Meanwhile, thrown together by the demands of the case, Rinaldi and Eleanor deal with the growing attraction between them, even as Sergeant Polk, recently divorced, spirals into an alcohol-driven, self-destructive free fall.

All of this is played out against the gubernatorial campaign of Rinaldi’s former romantic rival, District Attorney Leland Sinclair. Suddenly, as death threats against Sinclair fuel a mounting frenzy of accusations and political maneuvering, Rinaldi finds himself facing the reality that the two cases might somehow be connected and, therefore, what he knows—or thinks he knows—makes him a target as well.

Fever Dream is the second book in the Daniel Rinaldi series, following Mirror Image.

Psychologist and police consultant Daniel Rinaldi''s new patient—a former Hollywood starlet now married to a ruthless business tycoon—is kidnapped right outside his office. Through a bizarre sequence of events, he''s forced to deliver the ransom demand himself, drawing him into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a brilliant, lethal adversary. Complicating things is the victim''s own family, whose members have dark secrets of their own and whose loyalties are suspect.

The fourth in the acclaimed series of Daniel Rinaldi thrillers, Phantom Limb will have readers guessing and gasping for breath until the very last page.

Psychologist Dr. Daniel Rinaldi consults with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime—those who’ve survived an armed robbery, kidnapping, or sexual assault, but whose traumatic experience still haunts them. Head Wounds picks up where Rinaldi’s investigation in Phantom Limb left off, turning the tables on him as he himself becomes the target of a vicious killer.

“Miles Davis saved my life.” With these words Rinaldi becomes a participant in a domestic drama that blows up right outside his front door, saved from a bullet to the brain by pure chance. In the chaos that follows, Rinaldi learns his wealthy bad-girl neighbor has told her hair-triggered boyfriend Rinaldi is her lover. As things heat up, Rinaldi becomes a murder suspect.

But this is just the first act in this chilling, edge-of-your-seat thriller. As one savagery follows another, Rinaldi is forced to relive a terrible night that haunts him still and to realize that now he—and those he loves—are being victimized by a brilliant killer still in the grip of delusion. Determined to destroy Rinaldi by systematically targeting those close to him—his patients, colleagues, and friends—computer genius Sebastian Maddox strives to cause as much psychological pain as possible before finally orchestrating a bold, macabre death for his quarry.

How ironic. As Pittsburgh morphs from a blue-collar town to a tech giant, a psychopath deploys technology in a murderous way.

Enter two other figures from Rinaldi’s past: retired FBI profiler Lyle Barnes, once a patient who Rinaldi treated for night terrors; and Special Agent Gloria Reese, with whom he falls into a surprising, erotically charged affair. Warned by Maddox not to engage the authorities under the threat that random innocents throughout the city will die, Rinaldi and these two unlikely allies engage in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with an elusive killer who will stop at nothing in pursuit of what he imagines is revenge.

A true page-turner, Head Wounds is the electrifying fifth thriller in a critically acclaimed series by Dennis Palumbo. Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist in private practice.