Phantom Limb
Description
Psychologist and Pittsburgh Police Department consultant Daniel Rinaldi has a new patient. Lisa Harland, a local girl, once made a splash in Playboy and the dubious side of Hollywood before bottoming out. Back home, down and out again, she married one of the city's richest and most ruthless tycoons. Lisa's challenge to Danny is that she intends to commit suicide by 7:00 PM. His therapist skills may buy some time--but, exiting, she's kidnapped right outside his office.
Summoned to the Harland estate, Danny is forced, through a bizarre sequence of events, to be the bag man on the ransom delivery. This draws him into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a brilliant, lethal adversary. Complicating things is the unhappy Harland family, whose members have dark secrets of their own along with suspect loyalties, as well as one of Danny's other patients, a volatile vet whose life may, like Lisa's, be at risk. What is really at stake here?
Phantom Limb, fourth in the acclaimed series of Daniel Rinaldi thrillers, will keep readers guessing until the very last page.
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Person
Dennis Palumbo, M.A., MFT is a writer and licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues, primarily in the entertainment industry. His award-winning series of mystery thrillers--Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb, Head Wounds and the latest, Panic Attack--feature psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi.
He's also the author of Writing From the Inside Out, as well as a collection of mystery short stories, From Crime to Crime.
Recently he served as Consulting Producer on the Hulu limited series The Patient.
Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, Palumbo's credits include the feature film My Favorite Year, for which he was nominated for a WGA Award for Best Screenplay. He was also a staff writer for the ABC-TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, and has written numerous series episodes and pilots.
His first novel, City Wars is currently in development as a TV/film, and his short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Strand, Mystery Weekly, Black Cat Magazine and elsewhere. He provides articles and reviews for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Lancet, Capital Psychiatry and many others.
His column, "The Writer's Life," appeared monthly for six years in Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America. He's also done commentary for NPR's "All Things Considered" and regularly blogged for Psychology Today.
Dennis conducts workshops throughout the country. Recent appearances include the Family Therapy Network Annual Symposium, the Association for Humanistic Psychology, Cal State Northridge, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, PEN West, the Writers Guild Foundation, the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Screenwriting Expo, USC, the Romance Writers of America, the Nieman Foundation, the Directors Guild, and UCLA.
His work helping writers has been profiled in The New York Times, Premiere Magazine, Fade In, Angeleno, GQ, The Los Angeles Times and other publications, as well as on NPR and CNN.
A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Pepperdine University, he served on the faculty of UCLA Extension, where he was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year.