Risk Factor

The Story

Dr. Molly Katz is a resident physician in a psychiatric unit for young adolescents. When a nurse on the unit is knifed to death, and the obvious perpetrator is the heretofore gentle Jonathan, Molly is badly shaken. How could she have missed the symptoms of such behavior? When the boy, now catatonic, is removed to a hospital for the criminally insane, Molly moonlights there in order to keep an eye on her former patient and his treatment.Then another nurse is murdered. Other patients in the unit are suspected. A hair-raising denouement puts Molly and her children near death and bares the crucial question -- is the murderer irrevocably evil, born soulless, uncaring about any living thing?Dr. Atkins is well equipped to dramatize the question that engages so many faced with heinous crime -- the existence of pure evil.