The contortionist's handbook

John Vincent was born with an extra ring finger on one hand. To his constantly broke, jail-bound father, this was just something John had to live with. After years of ridicule by other children, his father gave him a magic book through which he learned some slight-of-hand tricks that helped him conceal his disfigurement from others. That, together with a sharp mind and a knack for replicating signatures and official documents, started John on a path of petty crime. Then he started getting inexplicable and untreatable migraines, which led to a history of drug abuse. As John started going in and out of hospitals for drug overdoses, he deftly learned how to change identities. This life of identity theft, drugs, and crime continues in a downward spiral, until he falls in love and meets his match. He starts to question his own identity, after rejecting it for so long, which eventually leads to some redemption. Clevenger cleverly creates a modern-day Mr. Ripley. --Michael Spinella

Clevenger's debut novel is a well-crafted but underplotted character study of a brilliant, damaged man who struggles with mental illness and substance abuse as he bounces in and out of prison and a series of hospitals around Los Angeles. Most of the novel takes place in the latter setting; some tense early scenes pit protagonist John Dolan Vincent against a psychiatrist known as "The Evaluator," who probes Vincent's psyche to see if his recent overdose of muscle relaxants was really a botched attempt to cure his migraine, as Vincent claims, or a suicide attempt. The twist is that Vincent has checked into the hospital under an assumed name; after each of his previous overdoses he has changed his identity to avoid being placed in a mental hospital. The psychiatric interview provides a decent vehicle for telling the story of Vincent's difficult family life and his decision to use his mathematical talent to assist a murky criminal network. The trouble is that Clevenger has little to offer to push his story forward besides Vincent's efforts to protect Keadra, the woman he falls in love with during a hospital stint, from the thugs who are trying to track him down. Clevenger is a solid writer who does some good work when it comes to creating a noirish atmosphere and smart, compelling characters, but the pace is uneven at best. The quality of the writing warrants a follow-up effort; hopefully, Clevenger will know what to do with his characters the next time around. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A brisk, savvy debut gives new meaning to the term "identity crisis," as Clevenger builds a neo-noir cliffhanger from the story of an unusually gifted man whose migraines drive him to drug overdoses-but who then has to reinvent himself to stay one step ahead of his past. For John Dolan Vincent, the predicament is familiar: Following yet another resuscitation by the EMT and ER personnel, he's awaiting psychiatric evaluation in a Hollywood hospital to determine whether he's suicidal. He knows the drill, but he also has another advantage-as far as his minders know, he's Daniel John Fletcher. When his Evaluator arrives and the questions begin, Johnny knows he has to be credible in order to be released, and once released that he immediately has to manufacture a new identity. As a child, a troubled family and antisocial tendencies, exacerbated by his having a sixth finger on his left hand, hid his phenomenal intelligence and his gifts for math and mimicry. Doing homework for hire and forging his parents' signatures naturally led to more trouble, until an arrest for forging a prescription gave him a juvenile record and jail time. Now in his 20s, any digging into one of his forged personas-which would be inevitable should he fail one of the suicide evaluations-would unmask him and bring more jail time. More than that, some of his work as a master forger has been for the mob, and what he knows is extremely dangerous to them. Having escaped them in the past, they've now found him as Daniel Fletcher-and have come to the hospital to wait for his release. Even worse, Johnny is in love, and Keara's life hangs in the balance too. Immaculately detailed and emotionally explosive: this is roiling, riveting stuff, of a piece with stylish, edgy movies like Memento and Requiem For a Dream.