Over the Line - Softcover

"She met Portia's eyes, and in that moment there passed between the two women a silent understanding. For Portia realized all over again what she had seen the first time they'd ever laid eyes on one another ... behind the efficient, almost robotic exterior of Amy Goodsnow, she too was a member of the club--the club whose members understood like no one else could all of the terrible things that can happen to children." That combination of chilling honesty and obvious insider knowledge of the darker areas of human behavior energizes every page of this thriller about forensic psychologist Portia McTeague. Faye Sultan, who has been involved in just such a role in many high-profile murder cases, and her cowriter, novelist Teresa Kennedy, used a notorious double murder in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the basis for their story. It raises a troubling question: just how crazy does a person have to be to keep a jury from sentencing him to death? There's little doubt that a hulking handyman named Jimmy Weir savagely killed two elderly women, but when a hotshot district attorney demands the death penalty, McTeague has to dig so deeply into the depths of Weir's tormented mind that her own hard-won mental equilibrium is seriously challenged.

Advance Praise for Over the Line:

"I like books that take you into a realm of experience you normally wouldn't have. Over the Line not only takes you into the inner world of a man who commits an unspeakable crime, but also into the fragile domain of the forensic psychologist who tries to help him. This is a murder mystery of a special sort. Not a who-done-it but a why-he-done-it,
and why his professional expert will never be the same again after she gets involved in trying to help him."
--Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking