Every Fifteen Minutes

Eric Parrish is a good guy. Okay?

Like, a really good guy.

He’s a brilliant doctor—the head of his hospital’s psychiatry ward!—and legitimately cares about his patients and making them better. He’s courteous, respectful, handsome (he has the cuttest abs of all the dads), diligent, and hard-working. He’s a loving father to his seven year old daughter, and still cares deeply for his ex-wife, even though she left him and is acting like a massive jerk in their divorce proceedings.

But bad stuff keeps happening to him! And he’s such a good guy! Don’t you feel bad for him? He’s so good! And this stuff is so unfair! Argh!!

Every Fifteen Minutes is a book about Eric, who is a good guy who has lots of bad stuff happen to him. Hmm... Yup, that seems to cover it.

It’s supposed to be a thriller, but after the first few pillars of Eric’s life topple, it becomes clear that the book won’t stop until Eric’s life is utterly demolished. So the question then simply becomes whether the book will have a happy ending where Eric is able to resolve all the issues or a sad ending where his life is left in shambles. Once you realize this, each new development where something goes wrong is expected rather than interesting. So the book is a thriller that loses its thrills rather quickly. There is eventually a murder, but the solution is literally just coincidence, so I would be loathe call the book a mystery or detective story.

The big gimmick of the book is that one of the characters is a sociopath, and every chapter begins with a monologue by them about how smart and evil they are. Considering how much the sociopath gloats about their brilliance and ruthlessness, you’d probably think they had some clever plan to take revenge against Eric for some grievous wrong. But of course that’s not the case. The sociopath’s entire plan consisted of maneuvering mildly troubling people into the periphery of Eric’s life. That’s it. The fact that these people happen to destroy Eric’s life so spectacularly and at the same time is pure chance. The sociopath’s motive for everything they do is similarly underwhelming. (I think a character that goes to such extremes for something so petty is not necessarily bad, but in the context of building this character up in the form of anonymous, taunting messages over the course of the entire book, it was a bit of an anticlimax.)

The sociopath gimmick is a neat idea for this type of book because it makes it more mystery-like, but it does not live up to that potential here. In a detective story, we know there is an unknown antagonist lurking below the waters—the murderer. In a book like Every Fifteen Minutes, however, which does not have a single, central conflict, it would not at all be obvious that there is a primary antagonist in play. These sociopathic monologues establish the existence of a main antagonist for the reader, which allows the reader to hunt for the sociopath as they would hunt for the killer in a detective novel. In theory. Here, the sociopath is largely unclued, so while trying to pick out the sociopath provides a bit of fun relief from the collapse of Eric’s life, the reader’s search feels like wasted effort in the end.

The writing is okay, but a bit uneven. The issue is that Lisa Scottoline is much more natural at writing on topics within her field of expertise. (I was able to tell just from the first few chapters that Scottoline was a lawyer and not a doctor.) Whenever Eric discusses medicine or his practice, the writing feels clunky and simplistic, but when the law is concerned it becomes smooth and natural. Considering how much of the book revolves around Eric’s practice, this becomes kind of annoying. Fortunately, the medical talk mostly ceases after the opening chapters finish establishing what a great, smart, caring, and effective doctor Eric is. (Also, I’m not a doctor, so maybe Scottoline’s description of the medical stuff actually is spot-on, and I’m just being a pompous faux intellectual. But to me the medical discussions felt like something you’d get from a 5-minute google search.)

The last place Every Fifteen Minutes goes wrong is the end. It has a twist (of course), but it goes one twist too far. At a certain point, everything feels explained and resolved. And then we get one more twist, which feels like it was added just to be a twist and stretches the suspension of disbelief juuust past the point of breaking.

This book is pity porn. If you want to feel bad for Eric, go ahead and read it. If you’re curious whether Eric makes it out okay, check out spoilers, or just read the last chapter. Otherwise, this book is hard to recommend. The mystery is not the focus or engaging, and it loses most of its suspense once you realize that everything is gong to go wrong until the end, when either everything will get resolved or it won’t. Either way, Every Fifteen Minutes is worth fifteen minutes of your life, tops.