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Demented
Three young men lured a co-ed into a room and raped her. Two of them got away with a misdemeanor assault charge. They could afford good lawyers. The third man was charged with felony rape and sent to prison for 15 years.
The woman, Cindy Smith, was left to her own resources. She started over, earned a degree, got a good job, and married a great guy. The skeleton in her closet was forgotten but not gone.
Sixteen years later, Adan Jackson, one of the rapists, is an executive in the office where Cindy works. She runs into him at a company party. He crashes her wedding. When he passes her in the corridors, he reminds her of the skeleton in her closet.
Cindy hires Private Investigator, Nickey Arnold, to deal with her tormentor. When the PI confronts Adan, pulls a knife and warns him to stay away from her client, the situation takes a deadly turn.
In this riveting tale of crime, punishment and getting away with it, Adan Jackson is crazy, our system of justice is demented, and our society has issues.
The woman, Cindy Smith, was left to her own resources. She started over, earned a degree, got a good job, and married a great guy. The skeleton in her closet was forgotten but not gone.
Sixteen years later, Adan Jackson, one of the rapists, is an executive in the office where Cindy works. She runs into him at a company party. He crashes her wedding. When he passes her in the corridors, he reminds her of the skeleton in her closet.
Cindy hires Private Investigator, Nickey Arnold, to deal with her tormentor. When the PI confronts Adan, pulls a knife and warns him to stay away from her client, the situation takes a deadly turn.
In this riveting tale of crime, punishment and getting away with it, Adan Jackson is crazy, our system of justice is demented, and our society has issues.
410 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 13, 2020
268 people are currently reading
551 people want to read
About the author
Joe Clark
5 books68 followersJoe Clark’s Demented got him Long-Listed for the Book Viral Millennium Book Award in 2020. His novels, The Walsh’s: the Coming of Eve, Demented, and MacGregor’s Final Battle are Book-of-the-Month selections. He writes Contemporary Drama and Urban Adventure. His “deliciously flawed characters” face moral and ethical dilemmas as they battle through challenging times. April Walsh, a suburban housewife and struggling writer, puts it all on the line in her undercover investigation of sex work. She and friend, PI Nickey Arnold, fight for the prickly, often abrasive, Cindy Foster when her porn past threatens to destroy her. Nurse’s Assistant, Kate Graham crosses lines when she falls in love with an elderly patient in MacGregor’s Final Battle.
Joe is a family man who had a forty-year career as a Communications Systems expert. He earned his degree in Electrical Engineering after serving in the Army including an extended tour in Vietnam. When he married Anita in 1986, they had four children, four cats and three dogs between them. Somehow it all worked out. They’ve added six grandkids and four great-grandkids. They make their home with their two lab-border mix rescue dogs in Maryland on the outskirts of DC in the house they’ve occupied for most of the last forty years.
Joe is currently working to tell the story of the Civil War from the perspective of his great-grandfather who served in the Union army from the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864.
Joe is a family man who had a forty-year career as a Communications Systems expert. He earned his degree in Electrical Engineering after serving in the Army including an extended tour in Vietnam. When he married Anita in 1986, they had four children, four cats and three dogs between them. Somehow it all worked out. They’ve added six grandkids and four great-grandkids. They make their home with their two lab-border mix rescue dogs in Maryland on the outskirts of DC in the house they’ve occupied for most of the last forty years.
Joe is currently working to tell the story of the Civil War from the perspective of his great-grandfather who served in the Union army from the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 to the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 11, 2021
See Amazon to read my review. 5 Stars!
August 24, 2020
Wow!
I won this on Goodreads and am very glad I did. Populated with very interesting characters, and the women are tremendous! Plot uses a crime to illustrate the unintended consequences of life choices and decisions. Provides insight into the realities of the National Sex Crimes Registry and our system of prisons. An entertaining book, I highly recommend it.
I won this on Goodreads and am very glad I did. Populated with very interesting characters, and the women are tremendous! Plot uses a crime to illustrate the unintended consequences of life choices and decisions. Provides insight into the realities of the National Sex Crimes Registry and our system of prisons. An entertaining book, I highly recommend it.
August 18, 2020
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
A woman is being sexually harassed and stalked. She hires a woman PI to take care of the situation. Things are not quite what they seem. A can of worms is opened, and things become very complex, threatening to spill over onto other peoples' lives.
Not bad.
A woman is being sexually harassed and stalked. She hires a woman PI to take care of the situation. Things are not quite what they seem. A can of worms is opened, and things become very complex, threatening to spill over onto other peoples' lives.
Not bad.
December 14, 2022
DEMENTED
This is about 3 guys who raped a woman and how only one served time. Wasn't enough to rape but harass the victim for informing on them. They go to a lot of trouble and that is what this story is about. I, did enjoy the story and will check this Author out
This is about 3 guys who raped a woman and how only one served time. Wasn't enough to rape but harass the victim for informing on them. They go to a lot of trouble and that is what this story is about. I, did enjoy the story and will check this Author out
May 29, 2023
A really good mystery
If you enjoy stories with really good guys, and really bad guys, all penned with the craft to make them real, you will really enjoy this. It is a different take on the good and bad, and the fact that we are all ambiguous. Have fun.
If you enjoy stories with really good guys, and really bad guys, all penned with the craft to make them real, you will really enjoy this. It is a different take on the good and bad, and the fact that we are all ambiguous. Have fun.
August 20, 2020
As much social commentary as crime drama, Clark's solid latest finds a rape victim trying to deal with her past trauma.
Cindy Foster was gang raped fifteen years ago after her then-boyfriend, the handsome Adan Jackson talked her into retiring to a secluded room during a frat party. The influential Adan and his brother got out of the case scoot free while the third rapist Troy Mondale charged with felony rape went to jail. Now sixteen years later, Cindy is happily married and has a successful career. But her past has come to haunt her once again: with Adan working in the same company, clear and sinister signs of intimidation are becoming rampant. She hires Private Investigator Nickey Arnold to deal with her tormentor. But things become murky soon with many parties involved, and Troy is out of jail.
Clark’s serious treatment of the subject of rape and Cindy not-so-smart earlier personal choices affecting others’ perceptions about the actual crime gives Cindy’s story both depth and substance. Clark’s characters are flesh-and-blood, humane characters and far from being perfect. Despite being a rape victim, Cindy doesn’t come out as an entirely sympathetic character, especially in the beginning. But as Nickey pieces together the details of her case, the reader will admire her resilience and her extraordinary ability to turn her life around.
Clark manages a somber tone despite veering into erotic and kinky, and the feistiness of Nickey is what drives the plot.
The layered narrative, vivid characterization, and swift pacing makes this a winner.
Intense, dark, and an absolute page-turner!
Cindy Foster was gang raped fifteen years ago after her then-boyfriend, the handsome Adan Jackson talked her into retiring to a secluded room during a frat party. The influential Adan and his brother got out of the case scoot free while the third rapist Troy Mondale charged with felony rape went to jail. Now sixteen years later, Cindy is happily married and has a successful career. But her past has come to haunt her once again: with Adan working in the same company, clear and sinister signs of intimidation are becoming rampant. She hires Private Investigator Nickey Arnold to deal with her tormentor. But things become murky soon with many parties involved, and Troy is out of jail.
Clark’s serious treatment of the subject of rape and Cindy not-so-smart earlier personal choices affecting others’ perceptions about the actual crime gives Cindy’s story both depth and substance. Clark’s characters are flesh-and-blood, humane characters and far from being perfect. Despite being a rape victim, Cindy doesn’t come out as an entirely sympathetic character, especially in the beginning. But as Nickey pieces together the details of her case, the reader will admire her resilience and her extraordinary ability to turn her life around.
Clark manages a somber tone despite veering into erotic and kinky, and the feistiness of Nickey is what drives the plot.
The layered narrative, vivid characterization, and swift pacing makes this a winner.
Intense, dark, and an absolute page-turner!
September 23, 2022
Cindy Smith is a young woman living in Washington, D.C., making a life of her own. Her present seems perfectly happy until her past hunts her down. Cindy has frequent suspicious encounters with Adan Jackson at her workplace. Adan Jackson is one of the three men who gang-raped her sixteen years before and got away with a misdemeanor assault charge. Cindy engages a private investigator, Nickey Arnold, to deal with her tormentor. But, as Nickey investigates further, a harrowing set of events lead all three men to make their way back into Cindy’s life, and she has to reopen chapters she never wished to read.
Demented by Joe Clark is a crime thriller novel that begins like a mystery and ends like an action movie. As stated by the author, it is genuinely a “story of crime, punishment and getting away with it.” Though being a crime drama, the author successfully maintains the characters’ compassionate nature. The story revolves around events that would help bring the plot forward and dwells in the great depths of its real-life characters.
The writing style is simple yet gripping. The story progresses with multiple episodic scenes, which could be translated well into a screenplay. The plot may feel like a train where we keep adding carriages to reach the end. Though this might be interesting for readers who love the suspense as a genre, it might be mind-boggling for others. The numerous characters and their names could be hard to keep in line with the story. However, the multifold narrative, strong roles, and quick pacing story wouldn’t let readers put down the book. The author effectively covers a realistic description of how law and justice play out in society.
Demented is a mystery thriller that will leave readers wondering if it is right to believe everything is either black or white or if it has been a grey area all along. It is a reviving tale of right or wrong and everything in between.
Demented by Joe Clark is a crime thriller novel that begins like a mystery and ends like an action movie. As stated by the author, it is genuinely a “story of crime, punishment and getting away with it.” Though being a crime drama, the author successfully maintains the characters’ compassionate nature. The story revolves around events that would help bring the plot forward and dwells in the great depths of its real-life characters.
The writing style is simple yet gripping. The story progresses with multiple episodic scenes, which could be translated well into a screenplay. The plot may feel like a train where we keep adding carriages to reach the end. Though this might be interesting for readers who love the suspense as a genre, it might be mind-boggling for others. The numerous characters and their names could be hard to keep in line with the story. However, the multifold narrative, strong roles, and quick pacing story wouldn’t let readers put down the book. The author effectively covers a realistic description of how law and justice play out in society.
Demented is a mystery thriller that will leave readers wondering if it is right to believe everything is either black or white or if it has been a grey area all along. It is a reviving tale of right or wrong and everything in between.
July 19, 2024
Decent effort but overall poor execution. Cindy “the victim” is clearly written from a male perspective and every female character fits a stereotype from the same perspective. Overall there are a lot of characters to follow. Worth a read but overdone.
February 9, 2025
Great story line. very Well written! I loved that it mentions several real locations in Maryland. I'm very familiar.
Very Well written! I loved that it mentions several real locations in Maryland. I'm very familiar with most of them.
Very Well written! I loved that it mentions several real locations in Maryland. I'm very familiar with most of them.
August 29, 2024
It was very busy! I had a hard time keeping all of the characters straight and understand what was all going on! Overall, it was just too confusing!
January 26, 2025
The end left a lot to be desired.
Read
January 3, 2023A fast moving legal thriller with characters that hold your attention
August 10, 2025
I did not like this book. I was so bored waiting for anything to happen and it never did.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews