Silent Witness: The Story of a Psychic Detective - Hardcover

Refreshingly low-key memoir by a crime-busting psychic. The narrative tack here is a bit odd: The story is told in the third person, taking Myer-Czetli's story only through the late 70's, and, throughout, she's called ``Nancy Anderson,'' married to ``John'' (no doubt coauthor Czetli, ``a free-lance journalist,'' is Myer-Czetli's second husband). Moreover, some details of the psychic's early life are, at least at first, particularly hard to swallow: Myer-Czetli tells how, as the young daughter of a State Department agricultural specialist in Chile, she conversed telepathically with an old gypsy and used her powers of mind to drive off a man-eating lion (``Flee to the mountains, she urged. Do not attack the villages''). But readers who scoff too much at these wonders will find themselves in the same position as the several Delaware cops, named by the authors, who doubted Myer-Czetli's abilities until they saw her in action. One narrative thread, in fact, involves her winning over the skeptical Det. Carl Williams, assigned by the superintendent of the Delaware State police (who'd heard about one of Myer-Czetli's earliest exploits, her locating of a drowned boy in Florida) to get her advice on an unsolved robbery that had left the victim in a coma. After Myer-Czetli accurately described the perpetrators as well as some stolen items, Williams took her abilities seriously and worked with her in solving other cases, including the sex-slaying of a young woman; the multiple stabbing of an old woman; a series of rapes, etc. Throughout, the psychic's story is humanized and given an attractive fragility by her successful attempt, after many miscarriages, to carry a baby to term, and by her oft-repeated uncertainties about the origin, extent, and meaning of her psychic powers. Unsensational, frank, and--despite its outlandish subject- -having the ring of truth. (Sixteen pages of photographs--not seen) (First serial to the National Enquirer) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Even skeptical police officers in Delaware came to believe in then-Nancy Anderson's psychic powers, and readers might, too. Time after time she presented evidence that led to the discovery of bodies and the identification of murderers. For example, in 1976 she accurately predicted that the body of a missing girl would be found with the first snow of 1978. When an FBI agent asked her about the next case he would handle, she said she saw hundreds of bodies of men, women and children who had been asphyxiated; not long afterward he was assigned to the Jonestown mass suicide. And so it goes throughout this intriguing book by the psychic and her husband, a freelance writer. First serial to the National Enquirer; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.