Carla

This is my best reviewed book and I think it will go down well in the US. It is full of personality disorders, relationships, mental illness, psychology and interaction - as if Jim Thompson had written Cuckoo's Nest.

Recently released inmate of a mental instituton, brilliant physicist Jon Dexter, is under strict instructions from his psychotherapist not to fall in love. He suffers an extreme form of BPD plus six or seven supporting conditions. He moves to a small town in the middle of England and, naturally, falls immediately in love with a barmaid and conservation student much younger than he, a girl called Carla.

Against all the odds, the girl returns the feelings and the two develop a relationship which transcends all the limitations and obstacles. Then, as it does, things begin to go badly wrong for the pair of them as other interested bodies intervene, leading to a genuinely tragic and violent conclusion.

Is she in danger? Or is he?