Each of us, I suppose, has had a 'to be or not to be' moment. We wonder, during those dark minutes, if maintaining our existence is worth the pain and effort. Happily, most of us shrug off such thoughts and plod along, hoping for brighter times down the road.

And so begins Susceptible, a hard-boiled detective story, with the added dimension of its investigating not only "whodunit", but also the human conditions of success and failure, family and detachment, love and loss, and ultimately, life and death. Philadelphia Private Investigator Phil Allman explores the suspicious suicide of a man whose life uncomfortably mirrors his own, leading him to examine the value of his own existence. Susceptible is at times elegiac, but more often funny; it is occasionally fatalistic, but in the end, is life affirming.