Privileged Communications — Pat Frieder

Secrets you tell a shrink go with her to the grave... or do they?

It looked like a double suicide-in more ways than one. Besieged by bankruptcy and disease, Alan and Denise Prather topped a dose of carbon monoxide with an exploding gas tank that turned them and their Cadillac into ashes. But Denise was a psychologist, and now the Santa Fe police want her patient records-including tapes of what attorney Matty Donahue's new client, Jimmy Abeyta, confessed on them....

Mattie isn't about to allow a breach of therapist-patient confidentiality. But while she fights the legal battles, she learns-from the wrong end of a fat man's fist-that the police aren't the only ones after those tapes. To protect her client, Matty must probe the lives of the dead couple. But she goes so deep that her exploration may well cost her own life.