This is a Monster of the Week episode where an author seems to predict murders in the plot of the book he is writing. These murders take the form of what Mulder refers to as psychic surgery where the victims’ hearts are removed without any other obvious injuries.
I had mixed feeling about this episode. On the positive side, the acting was good, the plot creepy and fairly interesting, and the ending was pretty intense. However, there were also a few things that really bother me about the episode as well. First, the author happens to move into the apartment right next to Mulder. He later claims in the episode that he had noticed Scully and tried to move into her apartment building but nothing was available and this was the next best thing. The whole thing just felt a little to contrived for my taste. The other thing that bothered me was that Scully did things that seemed out of character for her. I found her somewhat romantic interest in this author to be entirely unbelievable and out of character for her. I suppose you could argue it was because the author was really controlling her with his writing but this doesn’t really fit in with the revelation that the link between the murders and the novel had to do with a psychic link between the author and a dead surgeon.
I would give this episode 3/5 stars. It was a good episode overall but it could have been better if those couple of plot points didn’t feel so forced.