BookTrib review: Dr. Lowe Prescribes Laughs and Life Lessons in “The Backseat Shrink”

 

By Paige Bremner | October 14th, 2020 | Fiction, Trending

The perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect life. As a renowned psychiatrist with a brand-new book deal, Dr. Carlton Lowe is living the high life among the wealthy elite of Chicago. Upper-crust clients and talk show interviews are his bread and butter; he has no time for the seedy aspects of city life. Blue collar work, homeless people and crime don’t exist in his privileged world. He seems to have life all planned out, but the one thing he never considered was how easily it could all be taken away.

The Backseat Shrink by D.D. Kaye takes a humorous look at what happens when a man who is used to having everything suddenly has nothing. When Dr. Lowe’s wife and his attorney gang up on him to frame him for infidelity, he finds himself served with divorce papers. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he’s told that everything he owns now belongs to his soon-to-be ex-wife. The one exception: the couple’s ancient station wagon.

FROM BIG TIME TO BROKE

With his assets frozen, Dr. Lowe takes to the streets where he’s forced to live in his station wagon and mingle with the same homeless people he was content to ignore just one day earlier. Dr. Lowe may be spoiled, arrogant and a bit selfish, but he’s no cheater. He has no intention of rolling over and letting his blackmailers take him for a ride; he plans to put up a fight.

Without enough cash flow to buy a cup of coffee, how can he possibly afford the legal resources he’ll need to prove his case and win back his life? Well, the one thing they couldn’t take from him is his expertise as a psychiatrist. Now he’s the backseat shrink, dishing out advice and prescriptions from the back seat of his station wagon at the only rate his new homeless clients can afford: $1 for 10 minutes.

Between his sessions and his life on the streets, he meets a cast of down-on-their-luck characters whose stories run deeper than he ever imagined. He might have even found some friends who can help him, and none too soon because he seems to have accidentally parked his practice in the territory of an unfriendly drug lord.

SATIRE THAT’S ALL TOO RELEVANT

Readers are invited to laugh along as Dr. Lowe tries to fight his way back into his old life. Kaye takes a candid approach to satire, confronting readers with issues pertinent to present-day U.S. culture. She thrusts her larger-than-life characters into situations that will leave readers laughing, cringing and thinking “that’s too real” all at once.

Like any good satire, there are rich layers of lessons for real life that can be found under the light-hearted jokes. This book is a narrative written with just a hint of the essence of a screenplay, resulting in a fast-paced edge-of-the-seat experience for readers. Or shall we say, fast-paced edge-of-the-backseat experience.

Read review on BookTrib:

https://booktrib.com/2020/10/14/dr-lowe-prescribes-laughs-and-life-lessons-in-the-backseat-shrink/

The Backseat Shrink (the inner workings)

  

Dr. Carlton Lowe, renowned psychiatrist and wealthy cultural snob is blackmailed by his wife and long-time attorney who mastermind a scheme to cash in on his impending fame and fortune. His wife takes everything except the hideous 1970s family station wagon that had been stored in the garage for decades.

Without a legal leg to stand on or a pot to piss in, Dr. Lowe is officially homeless and living in his station wagon in downtown Chicago. He soon finds himself the backseat shrink to a cast of street denizens - the very destitute underclass who he had once blatantly voiced his outright disgust for.

Fuel fans the flames when unbeknownst to him, he’s parked in the territory of a notorious drug lord who is outraged by all the visitors to Dr. Lowe’s station wagon, assuming he’s a new gangster in town stealing his clients.

On the run, Dr. Lowe devises a plan to take down the drug lord while clearing his own name of scandal in a hilarious tangled twist of events. 

Author. D. D. Kaye. 

Genre. Fiction, Comedy, Drama, Adventure, Suspense.

Mature Subject Matter. Light violence, strong language, light sexual references.

Read the first 2 chapters for free on Amazon.  Click on the "Look Inside" of the E-book option to read the first 2 chapters:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087TH612D

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Where did I get the idea for the Backseat Shrink?

The Backseat Shrink started out as a screenplay. After realizing how difficult it is to break into the film industry, I decided to convert the screenplay to a book hoping a film producer might miraculously stumble across it. I've done a lot of volunteer work for health and human services agencies and know that most people are one paycheck away from homelessness... and that there are many people who wrongly judge them. The main character of The Backseat Shrink (Dr. Lowe) is one of those people who frowned upon the underprivileged until he became homeless himself. The book is a comedy but it also addresses how people end up in the homeless system and/or resort to drugs and crime.

Biggest challenges of writing The Backseat Shrink 

The setting for The Backseat Shrink is downtown Chicago. I've never been to Chicago, so it took months and months of research to understand the culture of Chicago, and to plot out various areas of downtown Chicago, finally settling upon the popular area called the Loop. I studied the landmarks, streets, establishments, the lingo and cuisine specific to Chicago. I looked at photos and read reviews about various places such as Millennial Park and the Harold Washington Library to get a realistic feel and visual of downtown. I researched the homeless crisis in Chicago and the harsh winters there. The most challenging thing was learning the slang of mobsters, police officers, psychiatrists, lawyers, street people, etc. It's amazing what you can find in Google searches! If my laptop is ever confiscated, I can only imagine that my browsing history would raise a few eyebrows. LOL. All in all, it was a helluva lot of fun writing The Backseat Shrink!

Traditional vs. Unconventional Authors & Readers

There are two types of books and two types of readers:

The first is the traditional type that gets the warm fuzzy feels for perfectly composed paragraphs, indentations calculated right down to the millimeter, safe story lines and slap-happy phrases that don’t take readers too far from their comfort zone… you know, the conventional writing style that “goes by the book” (pun intended). It allows readers to sip their tea and set the cruise control button for an enjoyable and relaxing ride on a smooth surface with no bumps, spills, or unwanted surprises – a vacation.

And then there is the “other” type – the ones that makes traditional readers slap an author’s wrist… the ones your Grandma warned you about...

…the rebel, nonconformist, break-all-the-writing-rules novels written by authors who would rather eat Jellied Moose Nose than play the game of follow-the-leader. Unapologetic novels that laugh in the face of conventionality. From chapter-1 they want readers to slam the brakes, say “what the f***”, their heads spinning until they stop and realize they’re reading a finely contrived piece of art and begin to savor its originality – that is, if they’re daring enough to take on something so deviant. Yes, those books that are riddled with controversy or concepts outside societal norms, or maybe they have a unique writing style that bewilders some readers but other readers find "unique" and "refreshing." Or how about those books that are criticized for being categorized as a "romance novel" just because the author has no qualms that lovers can both love and lust for each other with sexual desires that borderline savage?

Thus, if you're the rebel nonconformist type, don't go cuckoo over traditional types who don't understand you. They don't understand you either. To each their own, right? So how do you connect with like-minded authors and readers? I'm still trying to figure that out, but I'm on a mission and will Blog about it when I do. So stay tuned...