The Mask of Sanity

By: Jacob M. Appel

Narrated by: Dennis Adams

On the outside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a pillar of the community: the youngest division chief at his hospital, a model son to his elderly parents, fiercely devoted to his wife and two young daughters. On the inside, Dr. Jeremy Balint is a high-functioning sociopath - a man who truly believes himself to stand above the ethical norms of society. As long as life treats him well, Balint has no cause to harm others. When life treats him poorly, he reveals the depths of his cold-blooded depravity.

At a cultural moment when the media bombards us with images of so-called sociopaths who strive for good and criminals redeemed by repentance, The Mask of Sanity offers an antidote to implausible tales of evil gone right. In contrast to fictional predecessors like Dostoyevesky's Raskolnikov and Camus' Meursault, Dr. Balint is a man who already has it all - and will do everything in his power, no matter how immoral, to keep what he has.

©2017 Scribd Audio (P)2021 Jacob M. Appel

his endings!

great book! i found it engaging, with a different perspective than any other book that comes to mind - plus I love the author's endings!! :-)

Loved it!

I have looked for books that the main character is the villain. This is an amazing book, it also makes sense and is logical. Which is hard to come by. Overall great book and a great narrator. I hope more books like this come out soon.

I kept waiting for something to happen

**Spoiler alert***
Every chapter reads like it’s the one right before the big dramatic reveal. So you keep going and going and going and nothing.

Outlandish plot

The protagonist discovers that his wife is having an affair with his colleague, and decides to kill his rival. So far, so good. But when he decides to kill six other random people to disguise his connection to his victim, one’s suspension of disbelief is strained past the breaking point. Dr. Appel is, among other things, a psychiatrist, but his depiction of a sociopath is difficult to swallow. The fact that he borrowed his title from THE classic text on the subject is impudent.