When clinical psychologist is woken by the phone first thing in the morning, he knows it's not good news, but he suspects a client rather than the awful news that his lawyer wife's boss has been found at home, bludgeoned to death, his sedated invalid wife sleeping through the whole thing.
At the same time as supporting his own wife, and trying to unravel who killed Royal, Alex has an even bigger problem. The week of the Columbine anniversary, a new client appears, apparently wrestling with a dilemma - her son and his friend may be setting up to become the next Klebold and Harris. But she's not ready to directly acknowledge this and Alex, earning that his wife is a potential target, is unable to act in his usual, professionally distanced manner. As he slides deeper and deeper into ethically grey territory, Alex is fighting fires on an number of fronts.
Warning Signs alternates first person chapters from Alex's PoV with third person accounts from a couple of other characters and this, combined with the layered storylines, keeps the pace up. I worked out who did it about 250 pages in, which I usually find annoying, but White's writing and characterisation is so good that, rather than reducing my enjoyment, I felt pleased with myself for having deduced the killer and motive. I realised, when I started reading Warning Signs that I read the last White novel out of order, but that didn't matter, either. See my previous review, on August 9th, for more raving about this series, which seems to continue from strength to strength. - Alex (who has restricted internet access at the moment and therefore can't give as much time as usual to review-writing)
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