A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read is the first of 5 books written by William Rabkin, based on the television series Psych. The book was published in 2008.
In the wake of solving a high-profile murder case and getting the chief suspect - a billionaire's wife - off the hook, Shawn and Gus lose the Blueberry to the legal system when Bert Coules, the vengeful Santa Barbara District Attorney, has it impounded for several thousand dollars' worth of parking tickets - all racked up by Shawn without Gus' knowledge. After a long, hard walk to the impound lot, Shawn and Gus are nearly gunned down by the lot attendant when Shawn reveals he knows the attendant is an escapee from an Arizona chain gang. When the detectives flee, Gus is hit by a car and put in the hospital. Upon waking up, he finds that the woman who was driving the car that hit him, one Tara Larison, insists that Shawn has been sending her psychic signals for ages, and that she is his psychically-controlled slave - much to the astonishment of Shawn himself.
Things take a more complicated turn when the lot attendant turns up murdered, and Coules seems very keen on the detectives' whereabouts at his time of death. Meanwhile, Shawn and Gus receive an invitation from Dallas Steele, an old schoolmate of theirs who made it big as a billionaire after graduation. To test Shawn's psychic abilities, Steele is giving them ten million dollars to invest as they see fit, with offers to give them 10% of any profit made. Unfortunately, things start spiraling out of control when Tara starts proving herself a bit too eager to please, and bodies start piling up...
This book includes examples of the following tropes:
- Amoral Attorney: Bert Coules, the Santa Barbara DA. He’s originally shown to be petty when his seemingly ironclad case is completely blown open by Shawn, and he has Psych’s car towed in revenge (though not without reason, given all the parking tickets on it). He’s shown to have graduated to being outright murderous when it turns out he killed the impound lot attendant, and having a nasty trail behind him in Miami.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: When Steele’s butler drugs Shawn and the police with their drinks, leaving Gus the only lucid person left, Gus tells Tara that the butler screwed up Shawn’s burger order. Tara promptly gives the butler a Neck Snap.
- Big Fancy House: Steele lives in a huge mansion created by an eccentric millionaire several decades prior. It’s apparently a mishmash of American, European, and Asian styles, but they clash badly.
- Blackmail Backfire: Shawn tries to blackmail the impound lot attendant by threatening to reveal he was in an Arizona chain gang, which would have disqualified him from the city job he currently holds. The man responds by trying to shoot him and Gus.
- Black Widow: Gus strongly suspects X of being one; she marries two billionaires in rapid succession, then both of them met with unfortunate accidents, leaving her with all their money. However, it turns out she’s completely innocent.
- The Butler Did It: Steele’s butler was responsible for killing him, and let Tara take the fall.
- Chekhov's Gun: The toy boat-robots Shawn and Gus invest in have a problem with the paint; upon being dipped in water, they emit a powerful narcotic. Steele’s butler eventually uses them to paralyze Shawn and the police and set them up to be killed by Tara.
- Cute and Psycho: Tara is incredibly beautiful… and completely out of her mind.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It turns out the friendly old fishing shop owner who recently died was originally a Miami cop who exposed the corruption of a number of his fellows in the wake of a robbery, and they put him in the hospital for it.
- Epic Fail: Three of the business ventures Shawn and Gus invest in are downright comical failures. The paint on the toy boat-robots emits a powerful tranquilizer when they’re put in water, the high-efficiency cars have batteries that explode – violently – when pushed beyond a slow creep, and the oil detection tech hit a critical line in midtown Manhattan and caused a major power outage. The rest are all mentioned to still be failures, but are far less dramatic about it.
- Evil Is Petty: Steele spent millions of dollars to prove Shawn was a fraud… partly because he was envious of Shawn saving his wife, partly because he was still bitter about an incident in his youth where he failed to tie his shoes properly and Shawn made fun of him.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Seconds before trying to kill Shawn and Gus, the impound lot attendant claims that nobody will notice a couple bodies stowed away in the trunk of one of the cars. Gus realizes what he just said as he brings the shotgun up.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: In an attempt to distract the police, Tara tries abruptly making out with Juliet. Juliet is NOT pleased, though it does work.
- Hidden Purpose Test: Steele tries testing Shawn’s psychic abilities by offering him a number of investment opportunities and letting Shawn’s “gift” determine which of them would be solid investments. The twist is, every one of them is doomed to failure with obvious major flaws, but Steele withheld all information on those flaws, figuring a real psychic would be able to figure it out and at least call him out on it. When Shawn and Gus fall into the trap by just investing in what looked best, Steele loses millions, but also has ironclad evidence that Shawn is a fake.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During the climax, where Shawn usually reveals the various subtle clues that allowed him to solve the case Once an Episode, Shawn notes that he feels like the usual flashback tropes seen in the show are somehow “missing”, and he actually hires a harp player to help him out.
- Out-of-Character Alert: When Tara gleefully takes credit for killing Steele in front of a crowd, this is enough to convince Shawn she’s innocent, since it’s so far outside her usual Make It Look Like an Accident M.O.
- Poor Communication Kills: Tara nearly strangles Gus as he tries to get Shawn and Henry’s attention from outside their window, but it takes them some time to figure out what’s going on.
- Three Lines, Some Waiting: The three main plotlines – Shawn and Gus trying to keep Tara under control, Steele’s business proposal, and Shawn and Gus trying to get the Blueberry back while evading Coules and solving the lot attendant’s murder – are all mostly dealt with separately, until the end.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Steele’s butler often freezes for several seconds after being addressed by Shawn or Gus with their usual goofy shenanigans, and for most of the book, the protagonists are under the impression he’s trying to think of a proper response while retaining his impeccable dignity. It turns out he’s simply trying to suppress his towering rage.
- Yandere: Tara turns out to be this. She goes through a cycle where she meets a Phony Psychic, claims she’s receiving psychic messages from them, acts as their servant and assistant, starts acting violent and dangerous to anyone who inconveniences them, and then kills them when they inevitably do something to disappoint her, usually subjecting them to a Neck Snap and then insisting they fell down some stairs. In fact, it turns out she dissociates HARD when she enters the “murderous” phase, and the “fell down the stairs” story is what she honestly believes happens.
