"Dr. Jeremy Balint is a man who has it all. He's a respected community leader, a cardiologist with a thriving practice and a family man with a beautiful wife and two lovely young daughters. But when he discovers that his wife is having an affair with one of his colleagues, he begins methodically planning to take the man's life. Balint pretends the colleague is his best friend and feigns ignorance of his wife's infidelity. To avoid any hint that he has a motive for murder, he allows the affair to continue for months.He studies murder cases, both real and fictional, to learn how to avoid mistakes, always careful to leave no trace that could lead back to him. Finally, he decides that the best way to avoid being caught is to make it appear that the murder he is planning is just one in a series of random attacks by a deranged serial killer which means he has to kill six or seven times. As Balint begins his rampage, he is somewhat surprised to discover that he can bash and strangle without remorse.That's the premise of The Mask of Sanity , a novel that is both a suspenseful yarn and a chilling portrait of the mind of a high-functioning sociopath. The author, Jacob M. Appel, knows his subject well. He is a physician, an attorney and a former Ivy League professor who has made a study of sociopaths. And his crisp, muscular prose comes as no surprise from a prolific short story writer who has been shortlisted for the O'Henry Award and whose first novel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up , won the Dundee International Book Prize in 2012." -- Associated Press "Dr. Jeremy Balint, 'the youngest head of any medical division at Laurendale-Methodist Hospital,' discovers his inner psychopath in Appel's deeply unsettling novel set in what might be upstate New York. When Balint discovers that his wife, Amanda, is having an affair with his fellow doctor Warren Sugarman, he feels an overwhelming desire to murder Sugarman, and fulfilling this need soon consumes his otherwise normal life. As the wronged husband, Balint realizes that he'd be the logical suspect no matter how Sugarman dies-unless Sugarman appears to be the random target of a serial killer. So Balint sets out methodically murdering random strangers and tying lengths of green ribbon around their necks. Now known as the Emerald Choker, he takes no pleasure in the killings, but neither do they bother him. Each, after all, brings him closer to his goal of eliminating the detested Sugarman. Through matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental prose, Appel ( The Biology of Luck ) shows us the world through Balint's eyes and leaves the reader with a horrifying understanding of his actions." -- Publishers Weekly "In The Mask of Sanity , Jacob Appel delves into the mind of a murderer as he plots his version of the perfect crime. Upon learning that his wife is sleeping with one of his colleagues, Dr. Jeremy Balint decides to kill his rival-and to become a serial killer in order to hide his motive. Like its protagonist, the book is tightly focused on the crime, featuring lots of attention to detail and elaborate schemes to keep the outcome unclear. Along with the murders at the heart of the story, Appel gives Balint plenty of secrets to keep: having his own relationship with a woman who doesn't know he's married, working with the man he plans to kill, and hiding from his wife that he knows her secret. There isn't much sense of what Balint was like before discovering the affair, but his sociopathy influences nearly every aspect of his life. This isn't a character trying to overcome his demons, but one fully in league with them, and that keeps The Mask of Sanity moving." -- Foreword Reviews Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney, and bioethicist based in New York City. He is the author of six collections of short fiction, two novels, and a collection of essays. His short stories have been published in more than 200 journals and have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His commentary on law, medicine, and ethics has appeared in the New York Times , New York Post , New York Daily News , Chicago Tribune , Detroit Free Press , and many other major newspapers. He taught for many years at Brown University and currently reaches at the Gotham Writers Workshop and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Features & Highlights
On the outside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a pillar of the community: the youngest division chief at his hospital, a model son to his elderly parents, fiercely devoted to his wife and two young daughters. On the inside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a high-functioning sociopath--a man who truly believes himself to stand above the ethical norms of society. As long as life treats him well, Balint has no cause to harm others. When life treats him poorly, he reveals the depths of his cold-blooded depravity.At a cultural moment when the media bombards us with images of so-called sociopaths who strive for good and criminals redeemed by repentance,
The Mask of Sanity
offers an antidote to implausible tales of evil gone right. In contrast to fictional predecessors like Dostoyevesky's Raskolnikov and Camus' Meursault, Dr. Balint is a man who already has it all --and will do everything in his power, no matter how immoral, to keep what he has.
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Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
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The Mask of Sanity
From the publisher: On the outside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a pillar of the community: the youngest division chief at his hospital, a model son to his elderly parents, fiercely devoted to his wife and two young daughters. On the inside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a high-functioning sociopath - - a man who truly believes himself to stand above the ethical norms of society. As long as life treats him well, Balint has no cause to harm others. When life treats him poorly, he reveals the depths of his cold-blooded depravity. At a cultural moment when the media bombards us with images of so-called “sociopaths” who strive for good and criminals redeemed by repentance, The Mask of Sanity offers an antidote to implausible tales of “evil gone right.” In contrast to fictional predecessors like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov and Camus’ Mersault, Dr. Balint is a man who already “has it all” - - and will do everything in his power, no matter how immoral, to keep what he has.
The author’s Foreward lets us know immediately the source of the title phrase: “I have come to know a number of individuals who wear . . . ‘The Mask of Sanity,’ yet at their cores proved incapable of feeling empathy or compassion for their fellow human beings. . . Only recently, especially as a result of the exposure of gross misdeeds in the financial services industry and of large-scale Ponzi schemes, has the public become aware that many amoral individuals lurk in the highest echelons of power, be it business, law, and even in medicine. They are all around us, smiling and perpetrating evil.” Himself an attorney, physician and bioethicist, the author obviously knows whereof he speaks. And then he introduces us to Dr. Balint.
Married to his wife, Amanda, for 9 years, and with two daughters he adores, at 47 he has just been appointed chief of cardiology, the youngest in the hospital’s history to have that distinction. He has known the man he now discovers to be his wife’s lover since they both attended Columbia and then medical school, who is now a transplant surgeon at the same hospital as he. He becomes obsessed with killing the man. And not getting caught. “Inevitably, avoiding detection meant selecting additional targets.”
Not a page-turner in the usual sense of the word (i.e., taut suspense), the plot nonetheless pushes the reader to keep reading to see how it will unfold, and I rather unexpectedly found myself unable to put it down, consuming the novel in less than 36 hours. The final page will leave you, as it did me, startled, if not shocked, and saying “WHAT??”
This is a novel that grabs the reader from the first page and doesn’t let go. It is, obviously, highly recommended.
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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A murderous book lacking the feel of violence
Search for Jacob M. Appel on Amazon.com and you will discover a prolific author, still a young guy, who has written seven short-story collections and three novels. IMHO, a reader won’t go wrong with these story collections (I’ve read five), although good places to start are EINSTEIN’S BEACH HOUSE and SCOUTING FOR THE REAPER. Likewise, Appel’s first two novels are very strong. These are: THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T STAND UP, which is a satire about an intelligent but clueless botanist who becomes the hapless bugaboo of a relentless right-wing media; and THE BIOLOGY OF LUCK, which is a book-within-a-book and paean to love, New York City, and the connectedness of all experience, sometimes with a shout-out to Walt Whitman.
So what’s happening in the novel THE MASK OF SANITY, which Appel published in May 20017? Well, , Appel is partly in his comfort zone in this novel, since his protagonist, Dr. Jeremy Balint, lives in the suburbs and deals with the vicissitudes of marriage, parenting, and career. These are common issues in Appel’s fiction, which, at its best, concludes with a lyrical, quietly telling, or surprising twist. At the same time, Appel is exploring new areas in MASK, since Balint, as many Amazon.com reviewers have revealed, is a serial killer. As the book blurb says, “… Balint is a high-functioning sociopath…”
Don’t know any sociopaths myself, although I am well acquainted with a passel of narcissists. And so, I search Wikipedia, where I discover that a psychopath (there’s no entry for sociopath) is characterized by boldness, disinhibition, meanness, and a lack of empathy and remorse. And are these traits of Dr. Jeremy Balint when he is planning and executing a murder? Yes, definitely, which indicates that Appel has checked many of the basic psychopathology boxes as he created Balint’s character.
But is Balint really a persuasive character? Here, I’d urge everybody to read MASK and decide for themselves. But, IMHO, this novel suffers from a narrow, overly cautious, and calculating tone. In Balint, there is no rage or pleasure in revenge and his vibe is about the same when he argues with his wife, plays with his children, or murders a stranger. In fact, the only times—murders excluded—Balint reveals his weirdness are when he makes odd remarks and strange jokes to his rabbi, who apparently thinks Balint is just stressed.
Anyway, Appel has tried to limn Balint as a nerdy serial killer and milquetoast murderer. But MASK would have worked better if the novel had at least one flash of genuine anger. Instead, Balint is all discipline and deliberation and a lucky dilettante of dark technique.
Couldn’t round up.
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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Cardiologist become the Emerald Choker.
Youthful Dr. Jeremy Balint is a cardiologist on a rocket rising to a position of power as the youngest division chief at his hospital. His karma meter is definitely in the good zone as he has a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters. His life could not be better. Unfortunately, on his way home one afternoon in a rain storm he runs over a dachshund and suddenly his world turns sideways. He carries the hapless dog to a nearby colleague and spots his wife through the window in a compromising position.
Balint sets out to devise a diabolical plan to seek revenge and the rest of the book follows his (rising rocket’s) nose dive into the dark world of a serial killer. He certainly can’t just off Warren Sugarman without a complicated strategy so he starts his chess game with God. Before the book is over Balint is leading a triple life: family man, serial killer and philander. The conventional cardiologist become the Emerald Choker.
His scheme is well thought out and planned; he’s a graduate from Columbia Medical School, for gosh sake but his early attempts don’t always go as planned. As the old adage says “fake it till you make it” and so he did. Author Jacob M. Appel has written an appealing crime procedural from the POV of the criminal. From the get-go in his book Appel ponders the terms of Sociopaths or Psychopaths. He asks “Rather than being victims of derangement who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, they are self-interested and calculating creatures who recognize the difference, but simply do not care.” I’ve enjoyed several of the short story compilation by this author in the past and have certainly relished this novel.
Note: I received this copy of The Mask of Sanity from the author in exchange for an evaluation.
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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A dark page-turner
This new short novel from Jacob Appel is a tour de force page-turner. It’s the kind of book you can’t put down, despite your increasing horror as you read it, which puts it in a class with some of the great dark storytellers of the literary pantheon, such as William Golding, Edgar Allen Poe, and Edith Wharton. And yet the style and atmosphere—quirky, deadpan, limpid, and straightforwardly linear in its narration—are vintage Appel, and will be familiar to the many fans of his irresistible, award-winning short fiction. This is a spell-binding read, but it also makes a point. Appel’s portrait of a man completely lacking in empathy provokes us to examine the strength and resilience of our own compassion. The portrait also serves, incidentally, as something of a guide book or a puzzle key to understanding the sneering head case that we now find standing with his fists clenched atop the apex of political power in Washington.
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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The Mask of Sanity
I just finished The Mask of Sanity by Jacob M. Appel. After reading several short story anthologies by the same author, I was excited to receive a novella. Using the same tone and irony he has mastered, this story lives in the mind of a psychopathic serial killer. To most who know him he appears to be a generally good guy and pillar of society. Although I would have preferred more dialogue and less narrative, The Mask of Sanity provides what I suspect is a fairly accurate portrayal of what a fully functional yet depraved sociopath might actually have as thought processes.
I would have liked to have seen the protagonist-antagonist's lover Delilah more fully developed; otherwise, the character development for those featured most prominently was done well. Not one to waste words, Mr. Appel scores again with this one and brings to mind no less than Roald Dahl and Anton Chekhov's writings. He is very concise - much like a surgeon, with nothing wasted.
The ending was not what I expected as possible endings go, and was done impeccably.
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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"They are all around us, smiling and perpetrating evil."
I think that the scariest part of The Mask of Sanity, the latest offering from prolific jack-of-all-trades Jacob M. Appel (although he will likely have completed another book or two by the time I publish this review!), might possibly be the Author's Foreword.
Sometimes, when reading a thriller or a horror novel, it's difficult to totally suspend disbelief: spooky, creepy, or crazy characters either aren't spooky, creepy, or crazy enough, or they're just so completely over-the-top that they become self-parodying caricatures. Even when they strike just the right note – when they're unsettlingly, frighteningly realistic – we can still fall asleep (even if a bit shakily) after we've put our scary novel down for the night by reminding ourselves that such horrible creatures are works of fiction, supernatural inventions of a writer who makes things up for a living. I'm not sure what Jacob Appel considers his primary career focus, but chew on this: in addition to writing, DOCTOR Appel is also a practicing psychiatrist. And in the aforementioned Author's Foreword, he assures us that not only is a high-functioning, prominent-member-of-society psychopath like this novel's villain protagonist Dr. Jeremy Balint possible, but that there are, in fact, uncountable numbers of them out there in all echelons of society. "They are all around us, smiling and perpetrating evil." Great! Having been duly creeped out by this and henceforth looking askance at your own friends, neighbors, doctors, and possibly spouses, you might as well jump in to the abyss that is The Mask of Sanity with both feet!
Our initial encounter with Dr. Balint in the very first sentence of the book has him already embracing his identity as a multiple murderer. Having witnessed his wife in a compromising position with his co-worker and supposed best friend, transplant surgeon Warren Sugarman, some internal switch in Balint seems to flip, and, inside of just two days, he mutates from an assumedly erstwhile sane and sober person, his latent neuroses transformed into something darker and, let's face it, more insane. But then the entire novel, written from Balint's point of view, takes us through his increasingly horrifying actions, coldly logical thoughts, and disturbingly relatable emotions with the same neutral narrative treatment one might expect to be given any other fictional character, even a heroic figure.
And this is the novel's sneaky brilliance: Appel paints Balint so casual and nonchalant on the surface, his sociopathy mixed in with just enough "normal" feelings, that we not only believe that there are indeed people like him walking around seething with murderous, actionable rage just under their impeccable outer veneer, but that if we got to know them, we might even actually like them, be their friend, suspect *nothing*.
The author never truly addresses the question of whether psychopaths are born as opposed to "made" (i.e. nature vs nurture), but that just adds to the frisson and general creepiness: we simply do not know under what convincing façades monsters lurk. We *can't* know.
I did not award the final star due to the ending, which I want to make clear is not "bad", but was simply the result of a stylistic choice Appel made that isn't to my particular taste. It in no way negated my enjoyment of reading the book, it's just that this type of literary ending is not my cup of tea. Some folks will love it, some will not, and others won't care either way – it's just a matter of personal preference.
My own preferences about the tenors of endings notwithstanding, The Mask of Sanity is a thrilling psychological drama that doesn't depend, like so many modern suspense novels do, on wild plot twists and out-of-left-field developments to keep the reader's interest and adrenaline levels up. The plot's natural evolution – unnatural in spades as it is – is like watching a train wreck in slow motion: we see the events unfurl moment by moment and realize that when it's all over there will be an epic field of flaming wreckage, but we only ever see events through the twisted vantage point of the mastermind of the destruction before us.
(I received an advance electronic copy of this book directly from the author, in exchange for my honest review, which this is.)
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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An interesting take on murder,
An interesting take on murder, seen from the killer's perspective. Mask of Sanity explores the psychological progression during the planning stages and execution of the murders, as the killer expresses his doubts and fears, laughs internally at the police investigation, and selfishly manipulates his family and acquaintances. The writing sometimes comes across as cold and clinical, but so is the main character. It was interesting to see the reactions of his wife, family and friends to the murders, and how it affected their relationships with him. He thinks he hasn't changed, but you can see the changes reflected in those around him as he has committed himself and carried out the heinous deeds.
Summary: Highly recommended to readers interested in criminal psychology.
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Prolific writer allows us to cross a line
He's done it again. He's provided an entertaining novel about an incomprehensible subject: the makeup of a sociopath/serial killer who is able to go about his normal life with all its in and outs, while holding on to this idea of revenge that will change his destiny. Or was it already his destiny? Does a person turn on a dime and go from being a normal person to one who suddenly has no morals? Oh, but he does have some morals: his responsibility to his daughters. Do we ever really know our neighbor? And you know what? The scary part is that we can follow this character's thought process without blinking an eye. What would be extraordinary behavior in our own lives becomes understandable and well, normal, in the daily doings of a sociopath. This leads me to wonder just how far away abnormality is from normality. (less)
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1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Great career, wife who takes care of his entire ...
It's been a while since I stayed up past my bedtime to finish a book. It happened last night (this morning) with this book. The author had sent me a PDF of this book (and his others). If anyone wants a PDF, send me a message and I'll share it with you.
This book is about an upstanding doctor who has it all. Great career, wife who takes care of his entire life and two beautiful daughters. Life is good until he sees something that rocks his whole world. He decides he has to murder someone. But to throw off suspicion, he has to murder some strangers first. How and who make up a portion of the book.
The characters are great. You get a sense of who each main character is. I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers. I could've done without some of the medical personnel that didn't have much to do with the plot.
The last sentence of the book had me sit back and wonder.......
1 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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A thriller from start to finish.
I was provided with a copy of this book by the publisher.
I have enjoyed all the books by Jacob Appel, but this is my favorite so far.
It kept me rapt from start to finish. I don't believe in giving too much information about a book in reviews to prevent spoiling the book for others.
It's a story of a doctor, turned killer, and the extent to which he goes to deter the authorities from himself. As he gets sicker, his life gets better and better. Things keep working out in his favor. It makes you think about when is karma going to strike.
Mr. Appel ends the book in the most ambiguous way, which really makes you wonder what is next for this character.
