The Naked Face is the first novel (1970) written by Sidney Sheldon. It was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American author.

I found this book in my parent’s library and since I was on holiday I decided to give it a go.

Dr. Judd Stevens, a psychoanalyst in Chicago have been followed by an unknown murderer.

The story follows a sexy psychologist who is caught in the middle of a murder mystery. One of his clients, a “cured” homosexual wearing his rain jacket is stabbed outside of his offices.

After hours, his reformed prostitute secretary is also killed in a horrific manner.

The two policemen assigned to the case are useless and find joy in targeting the doctor as a prime suspect.

All that the doctor can do is use his brain and figure out who of his patients wants to kill him and why. For this, he listens in on his tapes and hires a private detective (who also turns out dead). He has the usual suspects: a paranoid businessman, a megalomaniac, a jilted husband of a nymphomaniac ex-movie star who is also suspected of murdering one of her boyfriends in a fit of rage. Who could be the killer?

Before the private investigator died (Moody), he gives a hint on the killer: Don Vinton.

With the attackers (plural) closing in on him, our doctor feels that he’s on his own – with just maybe one of the two detectives able to help him. McGreavy (the bad cop who tries to pin the murders on him), along with his police force tries to catch Stevens but he escapes and eventually realises that Don Vinton, in Italian, means the Big Man, a title given to the leader of a criminal syndicate: La Cosa Nostra. Angeli (the good cop who tries to save him) double crosses him and delivers him straight to the mob’s boss who is none other than the husband of one of his sexy female clients.

Wooooo!

So the book is full of twists and turns but, as a product of the 70’s, it’s rife with homophobia and sexism. All the women in the book are whores or ex-whores and want the D. The gay guy “was looking for it” and “had it coming”. And also … the attempting to portray the gayness as a deviance and something to be cured. Even the ex-gay boyfriend is a suspect at one point because, you know, gay guys like to kill each other for the fun of it.

In 1984 the novel was adapted as a film directed by Bryan Forbes, starring Roger Moore and Rod Steiger.

Right and wrong are rules we create so we can relate to other people. Without rules, there could be no such relationship.

I expected much more from a Sidney Sheldon book; overall, I found it very boring. Furthermore, the characters are not at all captivating, and the story contains several homophobic and racist terms. In short, I wasn’t at all curious to find out who the murderer was because I was hardly engaged with the narrative. I hope the author’s other books are better.