The psychology of crime is frequently the focus of detectives in mystery novels, but this month we look at three books where psychologists and psychiatrists themselves play a role in the unfolding of the events in the novels.

In Michael Gruber's the good son (Henry Holt, $26), his seventh provocative thriller, a Jungian psychologist uses her training to protect herself and others taken hostage by terrorists. Gruber has fashioned a complex, layered plot that delves into the religious and cultural differences—as well as the political and military ones—that divide the United States and its foes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The main character, Pakistani-American S. B. Laghari, brings this divide into sharp relief. Her fascinating personal history, resilience, and ingenuity provide much of the book's foundation. Laghari decides to return to her native Pakistan and the city of Lahore where many of her relatives still live to participate in an international conference on "Conflict Resolution on the Subcontinent: A Therapeutic Approach." The distinguished conference attracts a cast of international experts, as well as eccentric American telecom billionaire, William Craig.

On their way to the remote site chosen for the conference, their convoy is attacked, guards and drivers slaughtered, and the conferees are taken prisoner by terrorists. Craig is an obvious ransom target. The others are faced with execution in retaliation for losses suffered by those opposing the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While Sonia uses her knowledge of the culture, her training as a Jungian psychologist, and her wiles to deal with her captors and her fellow prisoners, her son Theo makes plans for a rescue. Theo, raised in both Pakistan and America, has served as an elite "shooter" for a secret army unit called the Intelligence Support Detachment. Theo casually remarks that "I've been killing people since I was nine years old; it's the only thing I'm really good at." Returning to Pakistan and attempting to locate and rescue his mother will test all of Theo's skills.

Gruber is no jingoist, and Theo is no Rambo slicing through the bad guys. The result is a thriller that offers both ideas and action, leaving the reader with a greater understanding of the conflict between Islam and the West.

Meg Gardiner's forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett makes her third appearance in the liar's lullaby (Dutton, $25.95). Beckett's unusual job is to perform "psychological autopsies" in cases of equivocal death—cases that might be natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. Here, she is called upon by the San Francisco Police Department to investigate the spectacular death of Tasia McFarland. McFarland, a singer/songwriter attempting a comeback, was once married to Robert McFarland, current president of the United States.
A performance in front of forty thousand fans at an outdoor concert goes horribly wrong as two show helicopters collide, while Tasia's planned spectacular entrance on a zip line ends with her death from a shot from the (supposed) prop gun she carried. The police, led by SFPD Lieutenant Amy Tang, are unable to determine whether Tasia shot herself deliberately or accidentally or was shot by someone else using her gun, so they call upon Beckett to perform a psychological autopsy.

Beckett soon finds herself dealing with a celebrity death and the tangential involvement of the president's office, but she must also contend with a cyber fan who had been obsessed with Tasia and with a right-wing blogger calling himself Thomas Paine who seeks to promote a revolution and attracts dangerous acolytes. A dizzying confluence of conspiracies begins with a rambling note left by Tasia "in the event of my assassination" that includes two songs, "After Me" and "The Liar's Lullaby," that seem to predict her murder and may contain veiled clues to her death. Was Tasia, who had a history of mental problems, simply paranoid and perhaps suicidal? Or was her death a prelude to more deaths and even a threat to the stability of the country?

Beckett ends up in a race to discover the answers before the case is taken out of her hands by political interests even as she endures subtle and overt attacks on her and her loved ones. Gardiner knows how to ratchet up suspense while keeping the reader guessing until the last piece of the puzzle is put in place.

In Chevy Stevens's stunning debut novel, still missing (St. Martin's, $24.99), the unnamed psychiatrist is a sounding board heard in the reflected comments of her troubled patient. Chevy Stevens's novel is the most unnerving novel I've read since Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs. Stevens takes the reader into the nightmare world of Annie O'Sullivan, a thirty-two-year-old Realtor from a small town on Vancouver Island who is kidnapped from an open house and swept away completely from the life she knew. Taken to a remote cabin, deprived of all communication with the outside world, dependent on her captor for every morsel of food and subject to his every whim, Annie somehow survives.

From the first page of Stevens's heart-stopper, the reader knows that Annie is no longer a captive, that she has been rescued or escaped from the warped fiend who abducted her and held her prisoner for a year. Yet the story of her captivity as revealed in bits and pieces to a psychiatrist as she tries to come to terms with what happened to her loses none of its horror.

There is no way for Annie to return to her former life after her year of isolation and trauma—no way to resume relations with her boyfriend, Luke, or with her best friend, Christina, and certainly not with her fussy, status-seeking mother. Her captor, who she calls simply "The Freak," has destroyed that self completely.

Stevens captures Annie's voice brilliantly. Shattered by her experiences, she lays down the law to her psychiatrist. She will speak, the psychiatrist will listen. No questions are permitted. Annie's voice is sometimes fragile, sometimes bitter, sometimes broken, but there is also steel in her voice—the steel that allowed her to survive her ordeal. And the psychiatrist's "voice" heard only in Annie's occasional spoken responses to a look or a gesture is extremely effective.

While Annie struggles to return to some semblance of normality, the police seek to discover who her captor was and how he came to target Annie. As answers begin to emerge Annie's fears and distrust become almost paralyzing. The conclusion is totally shocking and numbing. By far the best debut I've read this year and I'd be very surprised to read anything that tops it.