Four Kinds of Rain

Robert Wells, the hapless psychiatrist hero of Ward's superior noir novel, has spent many thousands of hours helping people at his free clinic in Baltimore. While treating art dealer Emile Bardan, who's suffering from paranoid delusions, Wells learns that Bardan owns a priceless Sumerian mask representing Utu, the "god of justice and vengeance." The no-longer-altruistic Dr. Wells starts to scheme to steal the mask and sell it to his patient's worst enemy and rival, Colin Edwards. But things don't go quite as expected, and the twists come fast and furious as Wells discovers that crime, like psychiatry, has its own peculiar bylaws. At once admirable and devious, Wells unsettles as much as he compels our sympathy. Ward (Red Baker , winner of the PEN West prize for Best Novel of 1985) has been a writer and producer on such TV shows as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice . Regional author tour. (Oct.)