The Captives

April 2, 2018
Orange Is the New Black meets Gone Girl in this ingenious psychological thriller from Immergut (Private Property). Frank Lundquist, a counselor at the Milford Basin Correctional Facility, has just received a new patient, Miranda Greene, who is serving a 52-year sentence for second-degree murder. It’s an ethical dilemma for Frank, who immediately recognizes Miranda as the golden girl who, because he had a crush on her, haunted his high school years. But Miranda doesn’t seem to recognize Frank, and after she ends up in the hospital following a failed suicide attempt, Frank hatches a daring scheme to help his former classmate. What follows is a prolonged sequence filled with suspense and irony. Told in alternating chapters from Frank and Miranda’s points of view, Immergut burrows inside the heads of her two main characters to dramatize their distinctive pathologies. She also expertly crafts the other characters in the story, including Frank’s younger junkie brother, Clyde, and several of Miranda’s fellow inmates, who all play an important part in the story’s surprising denouement. Immergut’s book begins as in incisive psychological portrait of two mismatched individuals and morphs into a nail-biting thriller.

June 1, 2018

When this novel opens, thirtyish psychologist Frank Lundquist is still reeling from having been fired from his private practice job in tony Manhattan and divorced by his wife. Miranda was a young teen when she lost her older sister in a tragic accident. Never fully recuperating from this shock, she continued through life with a "so what" attitude, leading her to make poor decisions and regrettable actions, jolting her transformation from the high-society daughter of a politician to a murderer sentenced to 50 years. Working as a psychologist at a woman's prison, Frank never expects to know personally any of the inmates, but as soon as Miranda walks into his office, he recognizes her as the popular girl he had a crush on in high school. When Miranda doesn't recall him, Frank decides not to unveil their shared past, even though he knows it's unethical, and continues to treat her, then falls for her all over again. VERDICT Obsession and control are the main themes driving the characters toward the surprising but satisfying conclusion of this compelling debut thriller from Immergut (Private Property: Stories). It's a slow burn but definitely worth the wait.--Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S., MD

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018
How far would you go for your high school crush?Frank Lundquist, former test subject for his famous psychologist father and now, at 32, a well-established psychologist himself, finds himself relegated to a position working at an upstate New York women's prison after a series of professional and personal breakdowns. To his surprise, he finds that one of his new patients is Miranda Greene, the girl he pined after in high school even though she didn't know his name. Ignoring his moral obligation to assign Miranda to another counselor, Frank decides he will make it his mission to support and "fix" her. Miranda has been through her share of ordeals, and she contemplates how she got to her current situation as she makes friends with some of the other inmates. As Frank becomes more and more obsessed with "helping" Miranda, the book speeds toward an unexpected finale which questions the idea of right and wrong. The chapters alternate between Frank's chapters (in first-person) and Miranda's chapters (in third), shedding light on their motivations and what's going on behind each of their facades. They're each surrounded by interesting side characters, from Frank's little brother who's a junkie to Miranda's ex-military prison friend, who deepen the world of the novel and add nuance to the main characters. Frank and Miranda both have traumatic events in their pasts that have made them what they are and haunt their every action, but though these events are built up, they're never fully explained, which makes the characters' emotions hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, the forward surge of the narrative never slows, pulling the reader along for the ride.Immergut (Private Property, 1992) has spun an interesting tale with fully realized characters whose ups and downs are compelling, even if sometimes confusing.

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May 1, 2018
After losing his private practice in a malpractice case, Frank Lundquist signs on as an inmate psychologist in a women's prison. In an of all the gin joints in all the world scenario, his newest patient turns out to be none other than Miranda Greene, the great unrequited love from his high-school days. Just beginning a 52-year sentence for her part in a violent crime masterminded by one of her many ill-suited lovers, Miranda is suffering from depression and understandably seeks counseling. She has a rather grim ulterior motive, however; she can't imagine spending the rest of her life behind bars and hopes to wrangle sufficient medications to commit suicide. While Miranda appears not to remember Frank from their shared past, he remains hopelessly smitten and concocts a dangerous plan to help her escape rather than die in jail. With its see-saw of quixotic emotions, Immergut's stunning debut is a taut psychological drama that explores both Frank's and Miranda's nuanced contemplation of an unimaginable future and an unspeakable past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)