Love, Madness, and Murder

A personal message from the author:

While investigating a murder at a hospital for the criminally insane, an undercover reporter checks in as a patient, Due to unforeseen circumstances, he can't get out. His wife enlists the aid of her former lover, now a high powered attorney, to help her husband. The romantic and legal sparks fly as a powerful hurricane heads in their direction.

I am a psychiatrist and started to write the book while Chief of Staff of a large hospital of that type. The novel itself was certainly informed by my experiences there. There are some satirical elements to the story and what one newspaper reviewer described as “darkly comic and hair raising”

— Mike Bartos

Ashley Roper, Afghanistan War combat veteran, is now a writer and tabloid publisher in Charleston, SC. The nearby Blakemore Anderson State Hospital (BASH) for the criminally insane, is offering up a rich variety of potentially juicy stories including an escaped murderer, a patient released by a jury, the violent murder of a staff member, and illicit drugs finding their way through the barbed wire perimeter of BASH.

Ash decides to investigate from the inside, but through a series of unforeseen circumstances, ends up trapped in the hospital as a patient. Ash's headstrong wife Sally J and her lawyer buddy and former lover Roswell take on the system to try and spring Ash. The romantic and legal sparks fly inside and outside of BASH on a hot July Fourth weekend. A roadside cafe owner, a charming weather forecaster, a meth cooking biker, a crooked cop, a homicide detective, battling lawyers, and a variety of incompetent bureaucrats cross paths in this engaging and dramatic adventure.

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