DENIAL Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an aesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can't free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path.As Denial opens, all of Clevenger's understanding and expertise are put to the test: He has been asked to rubber-stamp the mental competence of a homeless schizophrenic who has confessed to a particularly grisly murder. As evidence of a shocking series of murders begins to mount, Clevenger will be forced to confront his own most terrifying and powerful demons.