The scripted dialogue format is very effective. I don't recall seeing it before, but it gives the book a near screenplay feel -- more than appropriate for a novel that would make a great movie. It also eliminates extraneous data and cuts to the chase -- I like that. The way you take your time to build both tension and character through the first five hundred pages reminds me of Stephen King's It. Though the plot line is at that point fairly static, underlying every word is the subsonic rumbling of the volcano. What keeps the reader's attention, keeps him reading, is that certainty, that ominous portent of the explosion to come -- and the reader is not disappointed.

The climax of the novel (or in this case the eruption) was my favorite part. Okay, I admit it, I'm a sucker for action -- and what action it was! My God, what a vivid imagination. This is the stuff of nightmare. But I loved all the action scenes. You have a way with describing a fight that brings it home to the reader. I'm not sure what it is, but I could feel those head butts, those elbows to the abdomen...had my blood pressure going through the roof. That is a scene I would like to see filmed with Cameron Diaz as Fetters.

As for the denouement…I don't see how it could have ended with more of a punch to the solar plexus. It is knowing how to end a story that's hard, and that you have done to perfection. It is precisely that sense of timing that marks a master.

That said, I can see where you might find it difficult to find a publisher for Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun among New York publishers. As most editors are currently in analysis themselves, I doubt they would be open to the idea that perhaps they worship at a corrupt altar. But then that's the way it is in the publishing world today -- tread carefully, avoid the mines of political correctness or wear the brand of pariah…

This book the world needs. It blows the lid off the hypocrisy and corruption in the psychoanalysis "market" and, if it is as true as it seems, your novel is sorely needed. Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun deserves to be in the marketplace -- and in people's hands being read. It is my hope that we can work together to put it there. As to just how to do that, I would guess due to its literary qualities of the prose it would sell especially well to the readers of The New York Review of Books and Harpers. Were I to publish it, I would place prominent announcements in both.

I don't recall if this was a simultaneous submission, but if another publisher snaps up Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun before this reaches you -- and if they know what they are doing they should -- it will be my loss. In any case, I want to thank you for the privilege of reading it. It was a book I will never forget. And by the way, you're right -- I won't ever trust a psychologist again.