The psychoanalyst, usually fiction's varmint, provides ["The Cobweb"] with a hero as right, as outnumbered and finally as triumphant as a dead-shot sheriff in a Western. Courageously reversing the literary process that ordinarily rewards medical insight with prattfalls or strait-jackets, William Gibson has created an amazingly resourceful mind-doctor who brings order to a mental clinic on the plains of Nebraska where last century's cattle rustlers and redskins have given way to psychopaths, colleagues and administrators….

[Mr. Gibson] is serious, careful of detail, humanitarian and well informed. His Dr. McIver is called upon to master an intricate situation, sometimes comic, sometimes almost tragic, that arises when an attractive assistant desires to help patients by letting them design new drapes for their living room. A routine and trivial incident precipitates a drama that might have committed a lesser psychiatrist to his own institution.

The only problem that Dr. McIver is...