Teaser Tuesdays: Saving Max by Antoinette van Heugten

"He lies motionless in a slurry of blackened blood, his white T-shirt and underwear spattered with crazy, crimson spurts. His legs and arms are curled in fetal position. "
~Page 108

Title: Saving Max
Author: Antoinette van Heugten
ISBN: 978-0778329633
Publisher: Mira Books/2010
Pages: 400

Lawyer Danielle Parkman is a single mother with high-functioning Autistic son. Max, a teenager is very intelligent but lately he has withdrawn into himself by taking drugs and having violent tendencies. As nothing seems to work for him, Danielle decides to take him to Maitland, a well known psychiatric facility. They do some tests on Max telling her that Max needs constant care as he is violent, which can harm himself and others. Danielle doesn't believe it at all and wants him out of the facility but somehow can't take him out.

When she tries to get him out all by herself, she finds him lying in blood, unconscious and a body of another teenager, near him. That boy has been bruttaly stabbed to death. Thinking the worst, she tries to run away with her son and is caught, taken for an accessory for a violent crime. She is arrested and and is prevented from seeing her son.

But Danielle knows that Max can't have killed that other boy even though the circumstances point out towards him. She has to get to the bottom of it and save her son, no matter what. When she does that, she finds irregularities in Maitland, where no one is ready to cooperate with her. Infact she finds that, Max is being given drugs for what he is not. The more she gets into it, more and more skeletons seem to tumble out. She has to know if her son is responsible for the crime and she is prepared to go to any length to find out the truth. If not Max, who is the killer? And why?

Saving Max deals with the dilemma of a mother with a special need child. Dealing with autitism, in a daily basis is not easy. Max is vey intelligent but he is volatile and he can't lead a normal life like others. Danielle is well aware of that and tries to make it as normal she can, for Max. This along with it being a crime fiction, pulled me right into it. I could feel her pain at all times. Max's too. When the truth does come out, it is too horrifying to contemplate....