The Wrong Man

       If you have not read John Katzenbach's mystery novel, The Wrong Man, I would strongly recommend you get on the waiting list at the Tacoma Public Library now! This novel had me going through all kind of emotional changes... now putting the book aside because I did not want to experience what would happen in the next few paragraphs, then wanting desperately to say to one of the heroines (I liked  the four women characters in the novel a great deal)  "get moving, get out of there," and every now and then feeling angry and possessive with the villain.
       When I was a boy in short pants in Houston, I used to enjoy playing the villain when my friends and I would go running through the neighborhood doing the sheriff and the robbers thing. As an adult I have spent a lot of time trying to be the loving, rational, loyal African American male.  Katzenbach just grabbed me and put me right inside the arrogant, manipulative, obsessive villain in this one. I am convinced I needed to have his help to look again at the negative, hidden side of myself.  I hope that makes sense.

         Then the author dragged me into the final hard choices that had to be made in this book. And I found myself thinking of the hard choices you and I make daily in our personal, professional, and civic lives.
         I have become a John Katzenbach groupie! He helped me to look at  my vices and my virtues a little more closely and accept myself a little more humbly.
         Try this book. I think you will like it.