In the small town of Dixon in North Carolina an old woman called Lila Mooney is awaiting her morning groceries. It is her birthday, but she is not in the mood to celebrate it. Her quality of life has deteriorated so much that she is considering ending it, and to that purpose has collected a store of sleeping pills.
The groceries arrive, brought by the boy-man Jimmy Weir and, in a sudden irruption of only partly provoked frenzy, he rapes Lila, then eviscerates her. A few moments later another old woman, a friend of the now deceased Lila, comes to call, and suffers the same fate. It is an open and shut case: it is obvious that Jimmy is the perpetrator of the double homicide; the only thing in doubt is whether he is sane or insane. To determine which, the defence attorney, the wheelchair-bound Declan Dylan, hires forensic psychologist Portia McTeague, a woman whose mission in life it seems is to prevent killers like Jimmy Weir from being executed. By presenting their protagonist in such a guise, authors Sultan and Kennedy have immediately antagonised perhaps a majority of their putative readers. Many people would argue that a rabid dog should be put down, the bull that gores an unsuspecting farmer should be destroyed - any animal, and that includes the human variety, that exhibits a murderous streak, has to be eliminated.
According to the prognosis on Jimmy Weir, there is no chance of a cure, so, even if he is pronounced insane, he will have to be sedated each day and incarcerated in a top-security mental institution for the rest of his life. Is this preferable to the possibility of some form of redemption in another life after death? Our joint authors appear to believe so, the main bulk of their book being taken up with the efforts of Attorney Dylan and Psychologist McTeague to prove Weir's lack of culpability because of diminished responsibility. They have come up with a gripping narrative in the process.
In an author's note, Sultan, a forensic psychologist herself, admits that the book was originally conceived as a non-fiction account of her experiences testifying in courtrooms about the predictable psychological formulation of murderers, but, when American publishers showed little interest, plans were changed, writer Teresa Kennedy was hired, and a fictional veneer was placed on what is otherwise true to life.
It will be interesting to see if McTeague becomes another Kay Scarpetta or Temperance Brennan, with a series built around her. Signs are on it. Just turned forty, but wearing her age well, she has an adopted six-year-old daughter, a platonic friendship with Declan Dylan, a more physical one with P.I. Alan Simpson, and a hate one with rival psychologist Harry Falcone. And, of course, she is haunted by her own demons, with nightmares invading her sleeping hours and fears of failure to convince juries that her clients are insane staining her waking ones.
I will not spoil the ending of Over the Line by giving too much away, but I will say that I was a little disappointed by the facile manner in which a witness is introduced near the end to gain a result. However, Jimmy Weir - or Jimmy the Weird, as he is termed - will remain for quite a while in my mind, as will the manner in which he is brought to the state of psychosis that impels him to slaughter the old women. The evil that men - and women, too - do to one another is beyond understanding, the dark side of the soul, it seems, being limitless in the depth of its depravity.
Vincent Banville is a freelance journalist
