The Practice of Deceit: A Novel [Paperback]

Definitely a "couldn't put it down," with wonderful characters. Eric, the unsuspecting and deeply sympathetic psychotherapist protagonist, is particularly memorable, and I continue to think about him and the book long after finishing it. And Coleen, the lawyer-predator wife is fascinating and sympathetic in her own way--I found myself admiring her organizational skills and high functioning at the same time one is chilled by her horrific behavior. A complex, smart, thoughtful (and ultimately poignant) book drenched with psychological and social insight. Read it just to find out how they live in the beautiful houses of Scarsdale.

We know almost from the outset of his story that Eric Lavender's marriage is in trouble. He is, after all, telling that story from a holding cell in the Scarsdale Police Department, and it's a complaint from Eric's wife that's landed him there. But only a few weeks earlier Eric had been obliviously happy in his three-and-a-half-year marriage to Colleen, a divorce attorney known to her colleagues--if not her husband--as a barracuda when it comes to extracting blood from her clients' exes. Colleen's opening shot in a battle Eric had only dimly been aware was brewing is the police report she's filed alleging that Eric sexually molested his stepdaughter, Colleen's four-year-old from a previous relationship. Sitting on the hard bench in his cell with time on his hands, Eric begins to explain how things fell apart for him, a tale whose roots go back to the day he met Colleen. Four years earlier, still recovering from the emotional trauma of being abandoned by her husband while she was pregnant, Colleen boldly took the lead in wooing and winning Eric. In less than a year he'd left behind his apartment and his psychotherapy practice in New York and moved into her Scarsdale home, where he set about talking the community's pampered scions through their relatively uninteresting problems.

The trouble in their marriage starts when the wife of one of Eric's patients hires Colleen as a divorce lawyer. Colleen's hostile behavior when confronted with the problem of this conflict of interest--she and Eric are now ranged on either side of a domestic dispute--prompts Eric to take a closer look at the enigmatic woman he's married to. He gradually uncovers evidence that suggests she has been less than truthful to him about her background. The story of Eric's relationship with Colleen becomes mesmerizing as he slowly peels back the layers of his wife's perfidy, discovering as he does that he hardly knows her, that he cannot trust the woman who, chillingly, is now, as he's telling the story, acting as sole parent to their daughters.

Elizabeth Benedict's The Practice of Deceit is one of those rare books one is loath to see the end of. Smoothly written and well plotted, the book manages to be both quiet and suspenseful. I would have preferred that the final chapter of the book not be epistolary in form, and there is one action taken by the protagonist that continues to confuse me (his call to a client while in prison), but these are minor quibbles about a very good book.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

If an experienced clinical psychologist cannot see through an elaborate charade constructed by a femme fatale, where does that leave the rest of us mortals. Eric Lavender, a mid-forties bachelor from New York, is in LA attending to the death of his father, when Colleen Golden, a divorce attorney from Scarsdale, NY, who just happens to be staying at the same upscale hotel as Eric, begins a subtle but very successful pursuit of him. Eric allows her vague claims of victim hood to temper his questions about her past, especially in light of her exquisite appearance.

Eric marries Colleen and her daughter Zoe after an "accidental" baby is on the way, but she continues to be for Eric "unknowable." He does know that she has co-authored a successful book on divorce and has a successful practice. But Colleen makes a series of mistakes. First, she unknowingly becomes the divorce lawyer for the wife of one of Eric's patients in which exaggerated claims are made. Then, despite the conflict of interest, she belligerently refuses to step aside in the case. Earlier doubts about Colleen are now resurfaced with Eric.

Eric, from a Scarsdale jail cell, put there by a false accusation by Colleen, looks back on all of the little deceptions that have made his life with Colleen mostly a lie and put him in serious jeopardy. This aspect of the book is very interesting and suspenseful, watching Eric continually ignore his encounters with Colleen's trickery.

"Deceit" flows better than "Almost," Benedict's previous novel, (there is a discernible plot) but is similar in that it is an exploration of our ability to understand relationships. "Deceit" does lose a little steam towards the end as the deceit is played out. The book is entertaining and thought provoking.

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