Product Description

Los Angeles is full of actors. For psychologist Alex Delaware, finding out what's real and what's not is about to become a matter of life and horrific death ...Called in to evaluate an aspiring actress accused - along with her boyfriend - of staging her own abduction, Alex is indifferent when the case seems to go nowhere. But then the girl is savagely murdered, and suddenly a straightforward script takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Dylan Meserve, the victim's boyfriend, has also disappeared ...Is Dylan a deranged killer, or another victim? Alex and detective Milo Sturges begin auditioning suspects and trawling the depths of LA's seedy underbelly. Then more dead wannabes start turning up ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6886 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Synopsis
Los Angeles is full of actors. For psychologist Alex Delaware, finding out what's real and what's not is about to become a matter of life and horrific death ...Called in to evaluate an aspiring actress accused - along with her boyfriend - of staging her own abduction, Alex is indifferent when the case seems to go nowhere. But then the girl is savagely murdered, and suddenly a straightforward script takes a decidedly unexpected turn. Dylan Meserve, the victim's boyfriend, has also disappeared ...Is Dylan a deranged killer, or another victim? Alex and detective Milo Sturges begin auditioning suspects and trawling the depths of LA's seedy underbelly. Then more dead wannabes start turning up ...

About the Author
Jonathan Kellerman is the international bestselling thriller writer, best known for his series featuring psychologist Alex Delaware. He has won many awards for his novels, including the prestigious Edgar. He is married to the novelist Faye Kellerman and lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Tis most good
I may be biased, because I think Kellerman is one of the better writers around at the moment. And, actually, has been for the past decade or so. I also think Alex Delaware is a wonderful, wonderful character.

He's sardonic, and unflappable: he is the epitome of the "strong, silent type". What's fascinating with the Delaware series is we get to see what goes on inside the head of the strong silent type. Not something we get to see an awful lot. These people are often a mystery... are they as still on the inside as they appear? Do they have self-doubt like the rest of us? Each new book gives us another, thus deeper, insight into the mind of someone like that.

Kellerman routinely chucks in more red herrings than you can shake a stick at. (Although, if you're shaking sticks at fish, you're mean.) Sometimes it's easier than others to cut through the noise (as tuneful as it is) and single out whodunnit. Gone is one of them... to an extent. Some things you may guess; others you won't.

Something common to every single Delaware book is the way in which the layers are peeled back; one after the other, gradually taking the reader into an increasingly confusing world where you can't really see the wood for the trees. It keeps you turning the pages loyally, and it causes you to scratch your head more than once. These are finely plotted, well-thought out pieces of writing: detailed, and intricate.

Gone is perhaps less dark than some of his others, but it's no poorer for that. Despite having written as many as he has, and despite churning them out as quickly as he does, I don't think he sacrifices any of the quality. He is just a genuinely good writer who absolutely knows his business - both literary and psychologically.

I always liked Robin, and found their relationship a nice counterpoint to the brutality - much preferred her to the woeful Allison - so having her back was great. I can appreciate, however, that not liking her as a character would make her reappearance unwanted. That's a fairly arbitrary point to review, though, as it all depends on how you personally feel.

Whether you like her or not doesn't affect the quality of the writing which, as I said, is always good. No Kellerman book ever has pointless filler, and he always locks it up nice and tight.

All in all, a fab book. Not mind-blowing, no, but certainly better than a good 90% of what's available these days and absolutely worth a read.

I agree with Catblack uk
This book is interesting and it holds one's interest however there are several huge flaws.
a) Robyn (go away)and please no more in detail love life episodes they are boooring.
b) I found it offensive that neither the dogooder psychologist nor the policeman had any qualms about ruining a life of somebody who had (as far as they knew) done nothing more than staring with "creepy eyes" at people.
c) Putting blame on people willy nilly with no evidence whatsoever to back it up and getting caught up in their own silly theorizing (daydreaming).

An easy read from Jonathan Kellerman
"Gone," is the most recent paperback book by Jonathan Kellerman and stars his two main charecters, Milo Sturgis, gay detective inspector, and Alex Delaware, straight psychologist. At the start of this book a naive (and slightly dim-witted) pair of wannabe actors stage their own kidnapping to get attention from the world's media (and hopefully some juicy roles). They do this because they are sick of waiting tables, having decamped to Hollywood from the plane states to act.

When, a month after the incident, the girl turns up dead and the guy disappears, Milo Sturgis is called in to solve the case (and goes to his favorite psychologist-cum-side-kick Alex Delaware for advice about their behavior). The two then work together to solve the case.

The book is a really easy read. It rattles along at a fair old pace. Kellerman really knows how to tell a story, but I got a little irritated by the way he portrays struggling actors. I don't expect them all to be Lawrence Olivier (or even a regular on General Hospital), but I got a little irritated with quite how shallowly they're portrayed. They're presented as "beautiful people" types with little (if any) curiosity about the world around them. I think he could have done better than the cardboard cut out style characterization he achieved for some of this secondary characters.

On an unrelated note, if this is the first book you're thinking about reading by Kellerman, I should warn you that you're going to have to suspend your disbelief pretty quickly. As an example, one of the things I've never understood about the series is quite how Sturgis is allowed to bring Delaware in so regularly. He (Delaware) tends to go at it like a bull in a china shop sometimes, gets himself in hot water a lot and blurs the line between the police and civilians. In real life he wouldn't be allowed to do the things he does with impunity here.