I love Stephen White. Last week, listening to an interview with Jonathan Kellerman, the uniqueness of a series with a protagonist who was a shrink, written by a shrink, was emphasized. I was in the car yelling at the radio "what about Stephen White?" and I realize that despite some success, his works are overlooked WAY too much. 
 I love his books for lines like these: 
 (In musing on the nature of a dream and what he tells his patients about the nature of dreams): "Dreams are poetry about your life, I would tell them. You are the author, but the poems your unconscious writes at night are in a language you don't speak and in a dimension you can;t visit when you're awake. Interpret slumber poetry any way you like -- you will discover marvelous things about how your waking mind assesses he primitive concoctions your sleeping mind constructs." 
 (referring to his friend Sam, the cop): "But braggadocio wasn't one of Sam's vanities. I waited a judicious amount of time for him to continue the line of thought on his own, suspecting that his query to me was rhetorical and that any answer I floated would end up being the equivalent of using my fingernails to clean a viper's fangs." 
 A client in Colorado turned me on to this series about 12 years ago and I eagerly await each new installment. Complex plotting, incredibly developed characters whose lives we KNOW. I can't wait to see the next exploit of Dr. Alan Gregory, who will get involved in another mystery -- and I really CARE what happens to him and his family and friends.