Product Description

An Alex Delaware thriller – compulsive, intriguing and unputdownable

A woman’s body is found in marshland outside LA. By the next morning the police have discovered the decaying corpses of three more women. They were all prostitutes except for the most recent victim; a classically trained pianist employed by a wealthy family, Selena Bass seems out of place in the grim tableau.

Psychologist Alex Delaware is drafted in by homicide detective Milo Sturgis to help with the case. Details of the crimes suggest a serial killer is prowling LA’s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness... and consider an even more sinister mind at work. There are no easy answers, for the darkest of drives and desires will fuel the most devious of foes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38518 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Review
`Kellerman does not shy away from the nastiness of human nature - which comes into play in a horrid way at the gripping climax' --EVENING STANDARD

Review
`Kellerman does not shy away from the nastiness of human nature - which comes into play in a horrid way at the gripping climax'

About the Author
After a distinguished career in child psychology, Jonathan Kellerman turned to writing full-time, and there are now over thirty million copies of his novels in print. He is also the author of two volumes of psychology. He lives in Southern California with his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, and their four children.

Customer Reviews

Hard work
I agree with the above reviews. In fact, although I have previously been a Kellerman fan I'm not even sure I am going to be able to finish this one.

Alex seems a shadow - someone following the investigation around, occasionally speaking, occasionally going to ask some questions of his own. There is no psychology role for him. Not that I like psychology, but what's the point of the protagonist who is a psychologist if all he's going to do is act like the junior cop on the team? He simply doesn't have a function or thoughts of his own.

Milo doesn't seem much like Milo any more, either. I'm trying to avoid the use of the word 'cardboard' here, but it's difficult.

Yes, Kellerman does list what everyone's wearing (not new). It's one of my pet hates and in the writer's book of how not to do it. The dialogue and some of the narrative is very stilted, too. So much so that in places I have to re-read bits and try and work out what he means.

There have as yet been no gripping plot twists (I'm 2/3 of the way through). They haven't consulted anyone on why only the right hands may have been removed, or why the bodies were all facing East. It's all a fairly tedious gradually putting (weird) names to bodies and finding out nothing else except that each victim had at some point been seen with a bald man. I don't see that this justifies them pursuing the only bald man in the story. It may all become clear of course...if I get that far.

On a positive note, there hasn't been any dreary sex in this one.

I dare say that Alex's life will be hanging by a thread at the end, as usual. I can understand why. I'm starting to feel like shooting him myself.

Interesting Characters, More Alex Delaware Than Recently, and a Flawed Police Investigation

I hate to admit it: I like to read books about serial killers. The abnormal psychology that drives them provides a new perspective on what every day life is all about. This book begins as such a classic, involving lots of weirdness (hands chopped off, bones kept as souvenirs, bodies facing east, burials of prostitutes in a nature sanctuary, the Bird Marsh) . . . but tails off from there. The book's redeeming feature is that Jonathan Kellerman takes the time to make some of the new characters interesting, complex, and likely to surprise the reader.

Alex Delaware also has a bigger role to play than in several of the recent books in the series, especially in acting like a good guy.

The book's main weakness is that much of the plot hinges on the police having not done enough investigation to find out what all of the related parties look like. That seemed like a big miss. As a result, I was left feeling dissatisfied with the book at the end . . . especially after the motive for murder became clear, despite its strong beginning.

Unless you feel like you need to read every word that Jonathan Kellerman wrote about Alex Delaware, you could skip this book and not miss any important developments in the on-going characters.

Another Deeply Disappointing Alex Delaware Novel
I've read all of Kellerman's novels with the exception of three or four of the Alex Delaware books, but unfortunately he's turned into someone who churns out potboilers.

The first Alex Delaware novel 'When the Bough Breaks' was a genuinely refreshing entry into the crime fiction genre, while his early, non-series book 'The Butcher's Theatre' remains his best novel.

However, I'm afraid it's been downhill all the way since then, and his last few volumes have been instantly forgettable. Here, Alex Delaware plays a big role while he and his detective buddy Milo Sturgis make totally wrong assumptions in the pursuit of a particularly nasty serial killer. The investigation is shoddy, the events unbelievable - as is the Police Department's decision to lay out big bucks in retaining Delaware - a psychologist - for case after case. Psychology is a quack science - a lot of its suppositions aren't provable - and to me Delaware offers no insights that the average intelligent person couldn't make. But Kellerman himself is a respected psychologist so obviously he wishes to promote the claims of his profession.

The book starts out strongly, but rapidly declines, and the end result is all a bit messy and fairly silly.

And, although I've enjoyed quite a few of Kellerman's books I have begun to get enormously tired of the physical descriptions of every character where he feels the need to detail EVERY item of clothing that they're wearing. It's so glib and boring.

Jonathan, I think you've played the Delaware character to death and need to create someone new who the reader can identify with. And Milo Sturgis has become nothing more than a walking cliche. You can do much better than this - as you've proven in the past.