✍ Scribed by Jonathan Kellerman
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Kellerman returns to series hero Alex Delaware after last year's gripping stand-alone, The Conspiracy Club. The success of the long-running Delaware series is testament to both the author's skills and the reading public's hunger for mysteries featuring compassionate, intelligent protagonists, interesting secondary characters (including complex villains), strong plot lines and clear, unpretentious writing. Kellerman delivers all these once again in a tale that opens with Alex at dinner with his best friend, L.A. police lieutenant Milo Sturgis, when the sound of a police siren calls them to a nearby double homicide. The two victims are found in a Mustang convertible; the young man's zipper is open, the young woman's pants are down and each has a bullet in the brain. The man is identified as Gavin Quick, but little is known about the woman other than she's wearing Armani perfume and Jimmy Choo shoes. Milo and Alex interview Gavin Quick's nutty mother, Sheila, and his father, Jerry, a metals dealer and all-around shady character, as well as Gavin's therapist, Mary Lou Koppel. From there, the list of characters branches into an ever-widening delta of suspects and dead bodies. The investigation marches relentlessly on as Milo and Alex run each new lead to ground, slowly constructing an intricate motive that includes abusive boyfriends, eccentric ex-husbands, Medi-Cal fraud, a bent parole officer and Rwandan genocide. This one's more methodical than suspenseful and the final shoot-out and revelations feel tacked on, but fans won't mind as Alex and Milo eventually wrap everything up nicely, and Kellerman provides intriguing details of Alex's new love interest, Allison Gwynn.
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"Sometimes anxiety and fear make me feel alive." That's psychologist Alex Delaware's take on life and, by extension, his rationale for assisting his LAPD pal Milo Sturgis with the various criminal investigations that come across his desk. Lucky for fans of this long-running and wildly successful series, that's pretty often. This time the crime, the murder of a couple of twentysomethings parked in a secluded spot, is exceptionally vicious. When Delaware and Sturgis investigate, they discover one of the victims was associated with a celebrity psychologist. Therapy emerges as the key to the mystery after the psychologist and another of her patients turn up dead, but there's a tangled mess to unravel before it's clear precisely how it plays a part. As the investigation widens, numerous gritty secrets come to light and a deliciously complicated solution unfolds. As in most Delaware novels, it's the manipulation of circumstance that drives the story, and though the plot here shoots off in some unexpected directions, Kellerman shrewdly manages to bring everything together by the end; there's even a nifty surprise. And, of course, it's all neatly delivered in Delaware's urbane yet casual voice. Thumbs up yet again for the ever-popular Kellerman. Stephanie Zvirin
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