Atkins, Charles

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ATKINS, Charles

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Atkins Unlimited, LLC, P.O. Box 833, Woodbury, CT 06798. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Psychiatrist, author, and speaker. Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, member of clinical faculty in psychiatry; Waterbury Hospital, Waterbury, CT, director of behavioral health.

WRITINGS:

The Portrait, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Risk Factor, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Cadaver's Ball, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of short stories, articles, and essays to newspapers and magazines, including American Medical News. Consultant for Reader's Digest "Medical Breakthrough" series. Author, with Lisa Hoffmann, of column for Waterbury Republican.

SIDELIGHTS: Charles Atkins draws upon his experience as a psychiatrist, and on his love of thrillers, to write novels that feature protagonists struggling with mental illness, doctors struggling to aid their patients, and detectives struggling to solve murders. Through these tales, which have been praised for their suspense, Atkins also discusses such hot social topics as breakdowns in the mental health-care system and the root causes of teen violence.

The Portrait, Atkins's first detective novel, tells the story of Chad Greene, an artist who suffers from bipolar disorder and paranoia and is released from the psychiatric ward on the same day as the opening of his art exhibit at a New York gallery. Although Chad's psychiatrists work valiantly to help the artist keep his illness under control, Chad's medication leaves him feeling numb and incapable of real creativity; he takes himself off lithium and substitutes illicit drugs and alcohol whenever he feels a deep urge to paint. This behavior brings mixed blessings: it results in a successful art career, but a dreadful personal life. When Chad becomes the prime suspect in a murder, his paranoia kicks in hard, making him wonder whether he has been framed in a murder designed to raise the market value of his popular paintings.

Reviewers were generally impressed with Atkins's first novel, which a Publishers Weekly contributor called a "slick, assured debut" with a "satisfying conclusion." Booklist reviewer Whitney Scott singled out for praise Atkins's choice of "a riveting point of view—through the eyes of a creative psychotic, after all."

Risk Factor, a psychological thriller, deals with the issue of youth violence. The story is set in motion when a nurse is stabbed to death in the adolescent unit of the psychiatric ward at Boston Commonwealth Hospital. Fifteen-year-old Garret Jacobs, who suffers from schizophrenia, is the prime suspect. His doctor, Molly Katz, is consumed with guilt about her patient's apparently berserk episode; his previous behavior had not led her to suspect him to be capable of murder. When another nurse is killed while Garret is catatonic, the plot thickens. Dr. Katz devotes herself to solving the mystery and saving her patient from prison, but in the process, she puts herself and her own teenage children at risk.

Reviewers were impressed by the novel's competence in both the psychiatric and the thriller realms. School Library Journal contributor Carol DeAngelo called Risk Factor "compelling" and predicted that young-adult readers in particular are "sure to be fascinated by the symptomatology and care of teenaged psychiatric patients." A contributor to Publishers Weekly noted that, although Atkins's plot is sometimes subsumed in sociological, psychological, and political debates, "the chilling ending provides a shock that's more visceral than theoretical, which should satiate those who like their social psychology lesson laced with a measure of sinister suspense."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1998, Whitney Scott, review of The Portrait, p. 1592.

Journal of the American Medical Association, March 3, 1999, David W. Hodo, review of The Portrait, p. 851; April 12, 2000, David W. Hodo, review of Risk Factor, p. 1890.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1998, review of The Portrait, p. 597.

Publishers Weekly, April 27, 1998, review of The Portrait, p. 44; September 6, 1999, review of Risk Factor, p. 82.

School Library Journal, March, 2000, Carol DeAngelo, review of Risk Factor, p. 264.