The Storyteller of Cottage H

E.E. "Doc" Murdock is a psychologist. Therefore, it's not surprising that he sets his latest novel (his ninth) in a 1970s mental hospital. What is surprising is what a strange hospital it turns out to be. His protagonist is a psychology student at the local university who hopes to finish his degree before he gets drafted and sent to Vietnam. When he gets assigned to that hospital as part of an independent study program, he meets an old German patient who likes to tell Grimms-like tales of horror and murder. But is it possible the old man's "tall tales" are actually true stories? And what role did the old German man play during World War Two? Was he nothing more than a low-level guard in an art museum, as he claims, where he was assigned to guard art treasure stolen from Jews by the Nazis. Or was he actually a high-level official in a nearby Nazi extermination camp? Either way, what is he doing acting like a patient in an American mental hospital? Just when you think you know where Dr. Murdock's new novel is taking you, it changes and takes you down an unexpected new path. Is it a murder mystery, a romance, a study of psychological practice and mental health treatment in a bygone era, or is it a historical account of Nazi war crimes? Actually, it's all of the above.