SOURCE: Mitchison, Amanda. “Open Secrets.” New Statesman and Society 9, no. 400 (26 April 1996): 31.

In the following review, Mitchison feels that at times the essays in The Purloined Clinic are verbose and stray off track, but when Malcolm is focused, her writing is honest, direct, and stimulating.

The New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm is the daughter of a Czech psychoanalyst. Her great breadth of knowledge spans literature, psychoanalytic writing and the fine arts—all of which are covered in this selection of reviews and essays [The Purloined Clinic]. She also carries her erudition lightly and with poise. This book, for example, gained its title via a most tortuous route. It is named after an essay about a book about a painting which she thinks resembles an essay about a detective story—but in her accomplished, urbane prose, this train of thought seems quite effortless.

The story in question, which also bears...