What Jennifer Saw

The murder of a small town's most admired businessman and philanthropist - a man without an enemy in the world - in time sets in motion events which reveal the moral decay festering beneath his family's golden surface. Following the murder of her husband, his widow has metamorphosed suspiciously from a mousy hausfrau doting on her family to a newly energized vamp hurrying to a secret rendezvous with a mysterious lover. Her 24-year old son later discovers a letter from her paramour, written shortly before his father's murder, and begins to agonize over the unthinkable. The title character, the ethereal Jennifer, the 15-year-old daughter of the murder victim, witnessed her father's murder, but is suffering Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and cannot recall who she saw. A brilliant but maverick psychiatrist, wrestling demons of his own, is brought in to treat her and discovers she is also in the grip of Multiple Personality Disorder. He gambles everything on one high-risk roll of the dice to decipher her psyche, which harbors a grotesque m lange of angry "personas", one of whom holds the key to the identity of the killer and also possesses shocking knowledge about the murder victim as well. The psychiatrist knows that his battle against the cunning and malevolent alter egos who wish to possess Jennifer's soul must be successful, or else she may rapidly descend into madness and even death. There is also a strong feminist angle to the story as the heroine - the small town's newspaper woman - who has fought society's male-chauvinist restrictions for the chance to accomplish something truly significant, risks her life to confront a murderous psychopath she believes is the murderer in hopes of bringing him to justice.

Hal Schweig served as a crime reporter covering the mean streets of Chicago where he gained the knowledge/experience to write this book. He lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, Norma.