Privileged Conversation

A married middle aged Psychiatrist takes up with a young broadway dancer, who has a thing for older men. The story is interesting as well as fairly erotic until Hunter leaves the reader scratching his/her head by intrduction of a stalker. As you would expect Hunter, a longtime writer, has a good voice and his writing flows well. However, it does get disjointed once a stalker enters the picture. It really doesn't fit and Hunter didn't go into enough detail or the trouble to make it work. Hunter also seemed to be weak on character development. I didn't get a good feel for the characters, which weren't particularly likable. Privileged Conversations was released about ten years ago. While not a great book it does have it's moments. The overall feeling though the middle half of the book is quite erotic. The female character was quite adventurous sexually and among other things arranged a surprise manage a trios with black, dancer friend named Gloria. For me, this was the best thing in what would otherwise be an average book. Final rating, 3.65 stars.

I am not an avid reader of "fiction" and typically quit reading these books after a few chapters as they soon strike me as unbelievable. I especially avoid so called "psychological thrillers" and in particular those dealing with serial killers --and in part that has to do with a period of my career when, as an expert in the neurosciences, I had dealings with such individuals, including stalkers, serial rapists, murderers, the criminally insane etc. This book surprised me. I loved it. It was incredibly believable. The plot terrific. The characters deep and complex. This is an outstanding "psychological thriller." I highly recommend it.

This book is very Hitchcock-like, and is a well written novel with good characters, a fast-moving plot and an ending sure to surprise. Evan Hunter shows that when writing under his own name or writing as Ed McBain that he is one of the premier storytellers we have today, in any field!

I enjoy the Ed McBain books so I thought I'd try an Even Hunter and I was not disappointed. I read it in two days. Very good book

I thought this was a very good book. To me, the story line was believable; the characters interesting and credible. I must confess I felt a certain amount of contempt for Dr. David Chapman, the psychologist/protagonist, because of the way he handled his personal affairs, but to me it certainly didn't make the story line any less interesting. I found Kate's recurring compulsion credible and very well supported, and I thought Hunter was also trying to suggest an interesting parallelism between Chapman and Kate, and Chapman and his two daughters. Also I thought the erotic parts were very, very hot