Trained to be a detective by his father, blessed with astounding powers of observation and deduction, and cursed with a refusal to take anything seriously, Shawn Spencer has convinced everyone he’s psychic. Now, with his best friend, Gus, he’s either going to clean up…or be found out.
It’s Psych’s coolest case ever—the founder of a computer game company has disappeared, and the only way to find him is to search for clues inside the game. But before Shawn can get to level two, he is shocked to discover his partner, Gus, has decided he doesn’t want to be a detective anymore and has taken a grown-up job in the real world. Is this the end of Psych?
Or is it the end of Gus? Because when a fellow executive at Benson Pharmaceuticals turns up dead, he realizes there’s some bad business going on behind closed doors. Now Gus needs Shawn more than ever to solve this puzzle—before he’s forced to take an early, and permanent, retirement.
William Rabkin is a two-time Edgar Award nominee who writes the Psych series of novels and is the author of Writing the Pilot. He has consulted for studios in Canada, Germany, and Spain on television series production and teaches screenwriting at UCLA Extension and as an adjunct professor in UC Riverside's low-residency masters program.
William Rabkin has written and/or produced more than 300 hours of dramatic television. He served as showrunner on the long-running Dick Van Dyke mystery series “Diagnosis Murder” and on the action-adventure spectacle “Martial Law.” His many writing and producing credits include “The Glades,” “Monk,” “Psych, “Nero Wolfe,” “Missing,” “Spenser: For Hire,” “seaQuest 2032,” “Hunter” and “The Cosby Mysteries”. He has also written a dozen network TV pilots. His work has been nominated twice for the Edgar Award for best television episode by the Mystery Writers of America. He has published two books on writing for television, Successful Television Writing (2003), with Lee Goldberg and Writing The Pilot (2011) and five novels. He is the co-creator and co-editor of “The Dead Man,” a monthly series of supernatural action thrillers published by Amazon’s 47North imprint.
Rabkin, adjunct assistant professor of screen and television writing at the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert’s Low Residency MFA In Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, has lectured on television writing and production to writers, producers, and executives in Spain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands and Brazil. He also currently teaches “Beginning Television Writing” and “Advanced Television Rewriting Workshop” for Screenwriters University.
I've reviewed the previous Psych books and I can't say that this one was any better than the previous ones. My biggest complaint continues to be that the characterizations just don't match the TV show much at all. Gus is too timid and nervous and Shawn is not very bright in the books, which is not at all how the characters appear on the show.
Like the previous books, the author does use the medium to his advantage and creates a bigger story than what is possible on a cable TV budget and much of this book takes place in San Francisco rather than the usual Santa Barbara (which, in real life looks nothing like Vancouver, where the show is filmed). There are actually three different and seemingly totally separate mysteries in this book, but I thought it was too cute by half when all three turned out to be related to each other.
I miss this show so much! This book pretty closely captures the feeling of an episode. It may be a little over-the-top in some areas; and the characters are not quite the same. But it was still a fun read and I'll be looking for the others.
Reads like an episode of Psych (which I loved), but felt a little unnecessarily detoured throughout in subplots. The killer was a little predictable if you’ve seen any episodes of the show but because of the Shawn and Gus banter it was all worth it.
This appears to be the last installment of the books based on the superhit and amazing show Psych. In this one there are two different mysteries one worked by Shawn and Gus and another by crack team of Lassiter and O'Hara. But the unthinkable happens and Gus leaves Psych to join as a Jr. Vice President in a pharmaceutical company.
Another thing that both the crimes are non-crimes one disappearance and one suicide. But it was fun and heartbreaking in parts. This time Lassiter and O'Hara also got many scenes. Liked this iteration and like always the criminal was in plain sight and a surprise.
Though the books might have ended I am now on a Psych rewatch spree would be fun so while I watch Psych and laugh and read some more you do the same and Keep on Reading.
People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.
Enjoyed revisiting these characters from the TV show, but I felt like the ending could have come much sooner - it felt meandering and lengthy filler. I am interested in reading the first of the series to see how it compares (I chose this title because it was the only digital one available from my library).
Another fun Psych book. This is so far my favorite of the Psych books that I have read. I have one more to read and I will have read them all until another is published but these are always such fun to read. These books being based off the television series makes the characters fast favorites of mine when it comes to fiction.
This book is about the tragic yet funny split between Shawn and Gus. Gus takes an executive job with a big pharmaceutical company leaving Shawn to run Psych on his own. While Gus is creating his new grown up life Shawn is caught in the middle of two cases, little does he know that a third case is soon to require his attention. This was a great story that held my attention and kept me flying through chapters.
My only complaint about this book was the characters, Shawn and Gus, were a little more over the top than I would have liked. What I mean is the child like bickering that seems to be part of their character was way to long and I even found my myself wishing Shawn would just get to the point. No one can write a characters as well as James Roday, or Dulè Hill play them on television, but William Rabkin does a great job adapting them for these novels. I hope he keeps writing these because whenever I want a quick entertaining read I always fall back to one of these.
I thought this book was a pretty good addition to the psych novels. None of them are what I would call amazing, but if your a fan of the show, it is nice to read these especially since the show is no more. This being the last book in the series does make me kinda sad though, as it's the last new case of Shawn & Gus' I'll ever experience. I think that's why I waited so long to start this one, because even though it's not the show, the characters resemble the TV characters pretty well, and I miss them. Anyway, the story. I liked how each main character had at least a chapter written in their prespective. It was an easy read, and not a bad mystery. I'd suggested it to fans of the show who still want more Psych, but not to readers who've never watched it. Like the rest of the books, I think you need to already know and love the characters to appreciate these 5 novels.
Shawn's obsession with a new case may mean the end of Shawn's partnership with Gus in William Rabkin's Psych: Mind-altering Murder. I'm a huge fan of Psych and still can't believe the series is over. Now I've read the last book in the TV tie-in series, and I have to say it is the best of the five books written. Shawn is still his hyper yet extremely intelligent and observant self, yet this book shows a lot of the growth Shawn had throughout the TV series. The characters came to life on the page, and the fast paced plot kept me turning the pages to find out what would happen next. If you're a fan of the show, then you won't want to miss out on reading Psych: Mind-altering Murder by William Rabkin.
The book was pretty much like an episode of the show "psych" & this was my 1st time reading a book by this series.
It was about Gus & how he felt that he needed to move on w/hid life & grow up being in the real world w/a real job alone w/out Shawn. Gus takes a job @ a pharmaceuticals company higher position than his last job.
He later finds out that his workplace has had many swaths & Shawn finally gets hired to help figure it out. But he was in the middle of his current case that Gus left. Shawn figures out who is & we are all left behind shocked. In the end, Gus comes beck to work "psycho" despising that he had it good & he wants his old life back.
I have been a diehard fan of Psych since I blindly bought the first season on DVD from an FYE just to have something to watch after work. If that doesn't date myself enough, I'd say that was probably around 16 years ago at least. I fell in love with that show almost immediately. I've watched the entire series more than a few times, I'm not ashamed to say. I'm currently in the middle of another rewatch, this time with my girlfriend and I'm enjoying it even more this time around. Psych has always been my go-to comfort show. The show I toss on if I'm having a shitty day or week, if my headspace is all fucked up, if I'm down in the dumps about something. It has never, ever failed to provide me peace and comfort and laughs. Simply put, I adore this show. I love it and I cherish it and I'm convinced it could have lasted another 8 full seasons before it even remotely got old. So naturally, when I discovered there is a series of tie in books I had no choice but to check them out.
I've had this novel sitting around in my library for ages. I've tried reading it a few times in the past and have always given up about 100 pages in. It's been long enough since my last attempt that I had forgotten why that always seemed to happen, but this time around I was determined to see the thing through. At around the same point this time around, right around the hundred page mark, I felt myself slowing down and losing interest all over again. But this time it finally hit me.
These is a Psych tie-in novel, but it is NOT Psych. I have never read a tie in novel, at least not to my knowledge at the moment, so I'm not sure if this is a frequent occurrence, but this book had all the right characters and the right settings and a solid murder mystery, but it just wasn't Psych.
There is something about Shawn Spencer in the show that is nuanced. He is complicated and complex despite every single effort on his part to appear the opposite. He is snarky and sarcastic and manic, but he is loveable and relatable. Yes, there are elements about him that are stubborn and selfish and egotistic, but they are all shrouded in an air of tongue-in-cheek understanding. The same way Gus is whimpy and cautious and endlessly exasperated. None of that is apparent in this novel. Shawn is a borderline insufferable character, Gus is written in such a way that he seems to living in an entirely different novel and world all together, and the supporting cast of equally loveable and quirky characters are all but absent (except for a stretch of the middle where Jules seems integral to the plot before she disappears entirely for almost the entire last half). The friendship and comraderie of Shawn and Gus is also decidedly lacking. They don't seem like life-long best friends. In fact they don't seem to like each other very much at all. Their banter doesn't come across in the novel even remotely close to the way it does in the show, and the snarky and endless bantering reads like arguments instead of things to be laughing at.
I realize this is the 5th book in the series, something I wasn't aware of until I was already halfway through, so maybe this stuff has been building throughout the preceding 4 entries, but I wouldn't say I'm itching to find out. This seems to be the last one written as well, and it ends pretty blandly for it to be a conclusion to much of anything.
The mystery itself was fine. It was engaging enough and there was enough of a body count to keep things interesting, but it struggled to hold my interest all the way through. Especially since there were multiple cases being worked at once, most of which vanish from the narrative about halfway through. Most tie in by the end, as they always do, except for the main one that was being investigated for the entire first half of the novel. That just stops until a very rushed and tidy wrap up in the last 5 pages.
It's not that I hated the book or anything. I laughed a few times and all of the elements, at their most basic, of Psych are present and accounted for. There are media references, murders, bantering arguments, twists, big reveals. But the humor is just missing for me. The characters are all here but the things that make them so loveable and endearing and entertaining are missing in almost every regard. This read like any random corporate murder mystery would read, any drama about finding your place in life would read. It didn't read like an episode of Psych, even one of the lesser ones. The book was Psych without the soul, without the heart.
I'm thankful I have all the episodes to return to whenever I want. I'm thankful they are still making movies for me to check out (even though I don't have Peacock and can't find them on dvd anymore, no I won't give up on physical media, Shawn would be repulsed by the mere suggestion). I'm thankful that this show exists and has always been there for me and will always be there for me. I love Psych and it is in a coveted position amongst my favorite shows of all time (I think it may be the only family friendly comedy among my favorites actually). I'll always love Psych and will always recommend it to people and suggest it to friends. As for the books though, if they are all like this one I can live without them. One bad apple is too much of a good thing, or you can't have too much of a spoiled batch, something like that. I've heard it both ways.
Honestly I felt it was hard to get through, it was a very confusing plot and I think it was because the author did do a good job at making the characters just how they were on the tv show; however, that made it harder for me to follow and get through. This should not have taken me so long to read but I couldn't not read it once I started it and I didn't really want to finish it.
Another fun-read. Good plot line. Characters are interesting and exchanges between the two main ones (Shawn and Gus) well-written. Still not completely sold on Rabkin's portrayal of Gus -- I think he is more interesting and has a stronger sense of self and purpose than Rabkin writes, which I formed this from watching the series which came first/
This is my favorite of all the Psych books. I like how developed Gus is as a character in this book. His internal struggle with wanting to grow up and be an adult in the real world, but then wanting to be free from corporate America with Shawn is something that really resonated with me. I loved how their friendship with each other transcended being partners in a psychic detective agency and it was really about being together no matter what. I did feel a twinge of sorrow at Gus’ promotions not being real. I could only imagine similar pains and thinking you’ve finally achieved something, only to realize it was all set-up. Perhaps maybe he realized there was more to life than climbing the corporate ladder, though, like working with your best friend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
One of my favourites of these novelisations! A stronger Shawn-and-Gus plot than the show's runtime would be able to cover in a single episode, really analysing Gus' role in the detective agency where Shawn appears to do all the detecting, and a really interesting b-plot for Juliet (which of course tied perfectly into the a-plot at the end, as these things always do on television crime shows). My only complaint in this one? Not enough Henry! Rabkin seems to have trouble giving every main character a plot in these books, and it was Henry who was very short-changed in this one. Overall, a fun read, and a couple of very interesting cases with clues to solving them subtly there all along!
Shawn & Gus are separated for most of this novel, which automatically removes some of the banter that makes the show so fun.
The narration unfortunately incorporates the kind of light misogyny that we often get from Shawn & Gus. When the characters say it on the show, we the audience laugh because it just shows that this is a man-child. We don't laugh with them when they're boorish about women - we laugh at them. This author fails to make that distinction.
The mystery is fine, but the book is really disjointed by missing the character interplay. Too much gets shifted into internal monologuing, which is dead boring.
I did not really enjoy this installment (the last of the books). I love the show and the characters and the actors. The book did not quite capture what I love from the show. I'm trying to figure out if it would have worked as a script but I don't quite think so. The characters didn't resonate as themselves, and the writing was a little repetitive for me. For example, there were chapters that could have been a paragraph long with no loss. I don't mean to just pick on the book but I was really hoping for more than what I'd gotten.
Do you think it’s possible to solve an actual murder in a video game? Shawn Spencer thinks so, but he is the only one. Shawn’s friend Gus is fed up and is ready to move on with his life, which includes leaving Psych behind, but Shawn isn’t ready to let him go. In the real world, Juliet believes that a death that looks like a suicide is actually murder and no one is listening to her either, especially her partner Carlton. Jules and Shawn team up to prove everyone wrong in this hilarious murder mystery.
Loved this one! Psych is one of my favorite TV shows so I was excited to read some extra episodes. I like that the books follow Gus more than Shawn or the detectives. He’s not exactly a main character since Shawn usually steals the show, but you get a more in-depth version of Gus while following his mindset for the crimes. I wouldn’t recommend these if you haven’t seen a decent amount of the show. You won’t really understand the writing concept, but if you enjoy the show I highly recommend.
This is based on one of my favorite tv shows. I was expecting the book to have the same aspects of the show: great banter between Shawn and Gus and Shawn and Lassiter, Shawn's silly psychic rantings, a good mystery that can only be solved by Shawn's "visions" and Gus's smarts. "Come on, son" it had none of these. I was very disappointed.
The best way to describe this book is, it was like reading a fever dream, if that makes any sense. This book was so slow and so confusing and it rambled on and on, and on! This book could have easily been 200 pages if that! The plot was all over the place and didn't tie in or make any real sense.
A good finisher for the book series. Pushes the two main characters away for new adventures that offers new insight into both but then brings them back together at the end of course to tie back into the show. Top 2 in the 5 book series