Delusional.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Book review

Delusional

By Terry Lewis

Second Circuit Judge Terry Lewis knows crazy.

When he began researching Delusional--his third novel about rumpled, hard-drinking, flawed but likeable trial lawyer Ted Stevens--Lewis reached out to fellow judge Stew Parsons.

Parsons, who had served for many years as general counsel of Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, led Lewis to the clinical program director of the state mental hospital 50 miles from Tallahassee, who arranged for the judge to shadow psychologists and talk to patients and administrators.

So when Lewis crafts descriptions of the twisted thoughts of Nathan Hart--found not guilty by reason of insanity of killing three members of his family--there is an authentic ring to his paranoid schizophrenic delusions of being hard-wired to God's voice, among other auditory and visual hallucinations.

"At times I feel like a switchboard operator with too many incoming calls," describes Hart, who can hear whispers from 20 yards away and sniff a woman's perfume across a crowded room, when his mind isn't dulled by drugs.

But, Hart warns the reader, "before you dismiss my account as the ranting of a madman, ask yourself this: How could this supposedly crazy person present to you, in extensive detail, in cogent and literary prose, the events that have led us to this point?

"Remember, as well, that the truth is sometimes symbolic, and I may have to lay it between the lines. That is the core of myth, is it not?"

Separating fact from fiction, sanity from insanity, truth from lies, and good from evil is plopped in the unwilling lap of Stevens, a Tallahassee lawyer who six and a half years earlier had served as the prosecutor who tried unsuccessfully to put Hart away in prison. Stevens considers Hart to be a clever sociopath who faked mental illness to get away with murder.

In the current legal conundrum, Hart is now charged with the murder of his former psychologist, found stabbed to death in his office with a letter opener, shortly after Hart was denied conditional release from the mental hospital.

Lewis uses his judicial experience to deftly make credible this incredible lawyer-client relationship. Why would Stevens, on the conflict lawyer list, accept this court appointment to represent a guy he once prosecuted, especially when Hart had once threatened to kill his wife and daughter? Why can't Stevens just tell the judge he won't take the case?

When Stevens tells his law...