My Name Is Legion

An intriguing premise is undermined by sensationalized characters, lugubrious prose and a contrived plot in this debut novel, a whodunit with a psychiatric twist. Cate Lawson, 42-year-old director of a rape crisis center in Riverton, Wis., is called to a hospital for an emergency consultation with 27-year-old rape victim Mandie Harwood. Mandie has multiple personality disorder, and claims it was Anna, a six-year old personality, who has been raped by a nearly retarded man named Will Forsyth. The case becomes a legal mess, with Forsyth clearly believing he had consensual sex with a grown woman, and things get uglier when a tabloid luridly exploits the story. When Riverton's opportunistic and publicity-seeking district attorney charges Forsyth with the crime, Cate agrees to house Mandie through the trial to shield her from prying reporters. Mandie's background is ripe for exploitation, too, as the orphaned child of a Vietnamese woman and a U.S. soldier, adopted by an American family and plagued with mental illness all her life. Cate's existence is also complicated; she's in the middle of a messy divorce, and lonely for her daughter, Gena, who has moved to Washington, D.C. The revelation of the mystery is anticlimactic, and Berry's undistinguished prose lapses into stylistic irregularities; sometimes it's cloying, other times overly clinical. Nuances of character, setting and mood are never firmly established, and the origin of Mandie's disorder is never fleshed out. (Sept.)