Jonathan Kellerman
A Cold Heart (Alex Delaware, #17)
Jonathan Kellerman
LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis summons his friend, psychologist-sleuth Alex Delaware, to a trendy gallery where a promising young artist has been brutally garroted on the night of her first major showing. The details of the murder scene immediately suggest to Alex not an impulsive crime of passion, but the meticulous and taunting modus operandi of a serial killer.
Delaware's suspicions are borne out when he and Milo find there's a link between the artist's death and the murder of a noted blues guitarist. The twisting trail leads from halfway houses to palatial mansions, and from a college campus to the last place Alex ever expected: the doorstep of his ex-lover Robin Castagna. As more killings are discovered, unraveling the maddening puzzle assumes a chilling new importance --- stopping a vicious psychopath who's made cold-blood murder his chosen art form.
A Measure of Darkness
Jonathan Kellerman
From the bestselling father-son team who write "brilliant, page-turning fiction" comes the second installment in crime fiction's most intriguing new series.
It's been a busy year for Alameda County Coroner's Deputy Clay Edison. He's solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man--earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. And his brother's fresh out of prison, bringing with him a great big basket of crazy.
Then the call comes in the middle of the night. It's a bad one. A party in West Oakland. An argument with the neighbors. A crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. What Clay does know is this: it's going to be a long, long night. Longer than he ever could have imagined.
Because when the dust settles, there's an extra victim. One who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. She is Jane Doe. She is the Unknown. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into the bizarre--a seductive world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle; where right and wrong begin to blur.
Bad Love (Alex Delaware, #8)
Jonathan Kellerman
It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address - an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice chanting, "Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love." For Alex Delaware, the tape is the first indication that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, and a chilling act of trespass and vandalism.
Dr. Delaware has become the target of a carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation which rapidly build to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, and mischief to madness.
With the help of his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, Alex uncovers a series of violent deaths that may follow a diabolical pattern. But if he fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker and his or her mind games, Alex will be the next to die.
Billy Straight (Petra Connor, #1)
Jonathan Kellerman
A resourceful runaway alone in the wilds of Los Angeles, twelve-year-old Billy Straight suddenly witnesses a brutal stabbing in Griffith Park. Fleeing into the night, Billy cannot shake the horrific memory of the savage violence, nor the pursuit of a cold-blooded killer. For wherever Billy turns --- from Hollywood Boulevard to the boardwalks of Venice --- he is haunted by the chuck chuck sound of a knife sinking into flesh. As LAPD homicide detective Petra Connor desperately searches for the murderer, as the media swarms mercilessly around the story, the vicious madman stalks closer to his prey. Only Petra can save Billy. But it will take all her cunning to uncover a child lost in a fierce urban labyrinth --- where a killer seems right at home ...
Blood Test (Alex Delaware, #2)
Jonathan Kellerman
When a cancer patient Dr. Delaware was called in to evaluate disappears, he searches for answers in this thrilling second novel in the New York Times bestselling Alex Delaware series.Dr. Alexander Delaware, a child psychologist in Los Angeles, is called in to evaluate the case of a leukemia patient whose parents want to discontinue chemotherapy. When the boy disappears from the hospital and his parents are found dead, the only leads are the boy's sensual older sister and a holistic-meditative cult called The Touch. Delaware's search for the child takes him to a small town near the Mexican border where he finally unearths the dark secrets kept by the boy's family and the townspeople. He also uncovers drugs and group sex in the commune and survives a few harrowing attempts on his life. (Particularly well-drawn is a failed assassination at the tale's end, which has intriguing mythic echoes.) As in his praised first novel, When the Bough Breaks, Kellerman draws on his experience as a clinical psychologist to enrich and broaden his considerable storytelling talents. Imbued with a vivid sense of place and featuring a strong supporting cast, including Milo Sturgis, Delaware's burly gay detective friend, this second adventure points happily toward an Alex Delaware series.
Bones (Alex Delaware, #23)
Jonathan Kellerman
When it comes to writing deftly layered, tightly coiled novels of suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman reigns supreme as “master of the psychological thriller” (People). Now, Kellerman has worked his magic again in this chilling new masterpiece.
The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something “real dead . . . buried in your marsh.” The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it’s a prank, but when a young woman’s body turns up in L.A.’s Bird Marsh preserve no one’s laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes the city’s under siege to an insidious killer. Milo’s first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware.
The murdered women are prostitutes–except the most recent victim; a brilliant young musician from the East Coast, employed by a wealthy family to tutor a musical prodigy, Selena Bass seems out of place in the marsh’s grim tableau.
Conveniently–perhaps ominously–Selena’s blueblood employers are nowhere to be found, and their estate’ s jittery caretaker raises hackles. But Milo’s instincts and Alex’s insight are too well-honed to settle for easy answers, even given the dark secrets in this troubled man’s past. Their investigation unearths disturbing layers–about victims, potential victims, and suspects alike–plunging even deeper into the murky marsh’s enigmatic depths.
Bizarre details of the crimes suggest a devilish serial killer prowling L.A.’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. Answers don’t come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes.
Bones is classic Kellerman–relentlessly peeling back the skin and psyches of its characters and revealing the shadows and sins of the souls beneath. With jolt after jolt of galvanizing suspense, it drives the reader through its twists and turns toward a climax as satisfying as it is shattering.
Breakdown (Alex Delaware, #31)
Jonathan Kellerman
Bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman has been universally hailed as the master of psychological suspense, and the blockbuster new thriller featuring Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis confirms his status as today’s preeminent practitioner of saber-sharp storytelling. Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware meets beautiful and emotionally fragile TV actress Zelda Chase when called upon to evaluate her five-year-old son, Ovid. Years later, Alex is unexpectedly reunited with Zelda when she is involuntarily committed after a bizarre psychotic episode. Shortly after Zelda’s release, an already sad situation turns tragic when she is discovered dead on the grounds of a palatial Bel Air estate. Having experienced more than enough of L.A.’s dark side to recognize the scent of evil, Alex turns to his friend LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis for help in finding out who ended Zelda’s broken life. At the same time, Alex is caught up in another quest: the search for Zelda’s missing son. And when other victims vanish from the same upscale neighborhood, worry turns to terror. As Alex struggles to piece together the brief rise and steep fall of a gorgeous, talented actress, he and Milo unveil shattered dreams, the corruption of a family, and a grotesque betrayal of innocence. With each devastating revelation and damning clue, Alex’s brilliant mind is challenged as never before—and his determination grows to see a killer caged and the truth set free. Praise for Jonathan Kellerman “Jonathan Kellerman’s psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix.”—Los Angeles Times “Kellerman doesn’t just write psychological thrillers—he owns the genre.”—Detroit Free PressFrom the Hardcover edition.
City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)
Jonathan Kellerman
The past comes back to haunt psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis when they investigate a grisly double homicide and uncover an even more unspeakable motive in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.
Los Angeles is a city of sunlight, celebrity, and possibility. The L.A. often experienced by Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, is a city of the dead.
Early one morning, the two of them find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars, and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home.
Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case. Cordelia Gannett was a self-styled internet influencer who'd gotten into legal troubles by palming herself off as a psychologist. Even after promising to desist, she's found a loophole and has continued her online career, aiming to amass clicks and ads by cyber-coaching and cyber-counseling people plagued with relationship issues.
But upon closer examination, Alex and Milo discover that her own relationships are troublesome, including a tortured family history and a dubious personal past. Has that come back to haunt her in the worst way? Is the mystery man out in the street collateral damage or will he turn out to be the key to solving a grisly double homicide? As the psychologist and the detective explore L.A.'s meanest streets, they peel back layer after layer of secrets and encounter a savage, psychologically twisted, almost unthinkable motive for violence and bloodshed.
This is classic Delaware: Alex, a man Milo has come to see as irreplaceable, at his most insightful and brilliant.
Compulsion (Alex Delaware, #22)
Jonathan Kellerman
Book
Crime Scene (Clay Edison, #1)
Jonathan Kellerman
Natural causes or foul play? That's the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren't part of his beat--not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye.
Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life.
What emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man--and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert's died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record.
All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father's killer--even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it.
The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It's his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he's part of a story that makes his blood run cold.
A former star athlete turned coroner’s investigator is drawn into a brutal, complicated murder in this psychological thriller from a father-son writing team that delivers “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King).
Deception (Alex Delaware, #25)
Jonathan Kellerman
Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a long ordeal of abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.’s most prestigious prep schools. Homicide detective Milo Sturgis is assigned to probe the hallowed halls of Windsor Prep Academy, and if ever he could use Dr. Alex Delaware’s psychological prowess, it’s now. As the scandal-conscious elite close ranks around Windsor Prep, Alex and Milo push to expose the dirty secrets festering among society’s manor-born. But while searching for predators among the privileged, Alex and Milo may be walking into a highly polished death trap.
Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware, #7)
Jonathan Kellerman
The doctors call it Munchausen by proxy, the terrifying disease that causes parents to induce illness in their own children. Now, in his most frightening case, Dr. Alex Delaware may have to prove that a child's own mother or father is making her sick.
Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones is bright, energetic, the picture of health. Yet her parents rush her to the emergency room night after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Cassie's parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex Delaware is called in to investigate, instinct tells him that one of them may be a monster.
Then a physician at the hospital is brutally murdered. A shadowy death is revealed. And Alex and his friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis have only hours to uncover the link between these shocking events and the fate of an innocent child.
Double Homicide
Jonathan Kellerman
In Santa Fe, Darrel Two Moons and Steve Katz are called to the scene of a blunt-force homicide. Did the deceased, a wealthy art dealer, stumble on a burglar stealing a priceless painting, or did one of his many enemies finally seek revenge?Dorothy Breton is called to downtown Boston to find that her elder son is a witness to the killing of a promising athlete in a shoot-out. The evidence is stacked against the obvious culprit - until the autopsy shows the young man didn't die of gunshot wounds . . .
Dr. Death (Alex Delaware, #14)
Jonathan Kellerman
A brutalized corpse discovered in a remote region of the Hollywood Hills plunges psychologist-detective Alex Delaware into a landscape of rage and madness as he struggles to solve this most baffling of homicides.
To some, Eldon Mate was evil personified. Others saw the former physician as a saint. But one thing was clear: Dr. Death had snuffed out the lives of dozens of human beings and now someone had turned him into a victim. When Mate is found mutilated in a rented van, harnessed to his own killing machine, Delaware is asked to aid his old friend, homicide cop Milo Sturgis, in the hunt for the death doctor's executioner. But Alex harbors secrets of his own that threaten to derail the partners' friendship as well as the increasingly complex investigation. With page-turning suspense and vivid portraits of L.A.'s darkest side, perennial bestseller Jonathan Kellerman's latest tale of psychopathology taken to the extreme delivers an unforgettable journey into the most sinister corners of the human mind.
Evidence (Alex Delaware, #24)
Jonathan Kellerman
In a half-built mansion in Los Angeles, a watchman stumbles onto the bodies of a young couple—murdered and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace.
Veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is shocked at the sight: a twisted crime that only Milo and psychologist Alex Delaware can hope to solve. While the female victim’s identity remains in question, her companion is ID’d as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, notorious for his power to seduce women. The deeper Milo and Alex dig for clues, the longer the list of suspects grows. But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it’s the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator’s final fury.
Flesh and Blood (Alex Delaware, #15)
Jonathan Kellerman
Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Dr. Alex Delaware's office. Lauren angrily resists Alex's help----and the psychologist is forced to chalk Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of his profession. Years later, when Alex and Lauren come face-to-face in a shocking encounter, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame. But the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren's brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover, Robin Castagna, in order to pursue Lauren's killer. As he investigates his young patient's troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry----and then into mortal danger, when lust and big money collide in an unforgiving Los Angeles.
Gone (Alex Delaware, #20)
Jonathan Kellerman
It’s a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of them are found in the remote mountains of Malibu -battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor.
The details of the nightmarish event are shocking and brutal: The couple was carjacked at gunpoint by a masked assailant and subjected to a horrific regimen of confinement, starvation and assault.
But before long, doubts arise about the couple’s story, and as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax. Charged as criminals themselves, the aspiring actors claim emotional problems, and the court orders psychological evaluation for both.
Michaela is examined by Alex Delaware, who finds that her claims of depression and stress ring true enough. But they don’t explain her lies, and Alex is certain that there are hidden layers in this sordid psychodrama that even he hasn’t been able to penetrate.
Nevertheless, the case is closed–only to be violently reopened when Michaela is savagely murdered. When the police look for Dylan, they find that he’s gone. Is he the killer or a victim himself? Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A., Delaware and Sturgis unearth more questions than answers–including a host of eerily identical killings. What really happened to the couple who cried wolf? And what bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?
Guilt (Alex Delaware, #28)
Jonathan Kellerman
In an upscale L.A. neighborhood, a backyard renovation unearths an infant’s body, buried sixty years ago. Soon thereafter, in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Helping LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to link these eerie incidents is brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But even the good doctor’s vast experience with matters both clinical and criminal might not be enough to cut down to the bone of this chilling case. Backtracking six decades into the past stirs up tales of a beautiful nurse with a mystery lover, a handsome, wealthy doctor who seems too good to be true, and a hospital with a notorious reputation—all of them long gone, along with any records of a newborn, and destined for anonymity. But the specter of fame rears its head when the case unexpectedly twists in the direction of the highest echelons of celebrity privilege. Entering this sheltered world, Alex little imagines the macabre layer just below the surface—a decadent quagmire of unholy rituals and grisly sacrifice.
Half Moon Bay (Clay Edison, #3)
Jonathan Kellerman
Heartbreak Hotel (Alex Delaware, #32)
Jonathan Kellerman
Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate the death of Alex’s most mysterious patient to date in the sensational new thriller from the master of suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman.
At nearly one hundred years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients that child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history.
What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions—about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior, victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he shows up the following morning, he is met with silence: Thalia is dead in her room.
When questions arise about how Thalia perished, Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman’s life and embark on one of the most baffling investigations either of them has ever experienced. For Thalia Mars is a victim like no other, an enigma who harbored nearly a century of secrets and whose life and death draw those around her into a vortex of violence.
Killer (Alex Delaware, #29)
Jonathan Kellerman
Killer is a mesmerizing L.A. noir portrayal of the darkest impulses of human nature carried to shocking extremes.
The City of Angels has more than its share of psychopaths, and no one recognizes that more acutely than the brilliant psychologist and police consultant Dr. Alex Delaware. Despite that, Constance Sykes, a sophisticated, successful physician, hardly seems like someone Alex needs to fear. Then, at the behest of the court, he becomes embroiled in a bizarre child custody dispute initiated by Connie against her sister and begins to realize that there is much about the siblings he has failed to comprehend. And when the court battle between the Sykes sisters erupts into cold, calculating murder and a rapidly growing number of victims, Alex knows he’s been snared in a toxic web of pathology.
Nothing would please Alex more than to be free of the ugly spectacle known as Sykes v. Sykes. But then the little girl at the center of the vicious dispute disappears and Alex knows he must work with longtime friend Detective Milo Sturgis, braving an obstacle course of Hollywood washouts, gangbangers, and self-serving jurists in order to save an innocent life.
Killer is Kellerman—and Delaware—at their finest.
Monster (Alex Delaware #13)
Jonathan Kellerman
A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense-- they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked behind asylum walls possibly know such vivid details of crimes committed in the outside world? Drawn into a labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation, Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to unlock this enigma and put an end to the brutal killings-- before the madman predicts their own demise. . .
Consulting psychologist Alex Delaware has a novel approach to crime-solving: he uses his training to unlock the secrets in the minds of the victims and jiggles the clues he finds there until the right scenario emerges. So when Alex's LAPD buddy Milo finds the hacked-up body of a woman psychologist named Claire Argent in an abandoned car trunk--the second such murder in eight months--Alex heads for her place of employment: the Starkweather State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
One of Argent's patients at Starkweather is Ardis "Monster" Peake, imprisoned for the unbelievably brutal murders of his mother and the family she worked for, including a small child and a baby. There's at least one eerie similarity between the mutilation of their bodies and Argent's: in all the bodies, the eyes were taken or destroyed. But Peake, diagnosed as schizophrenic and psychotic, is a well-behaved vegetable due to a steady diet of Thorazine, and he hasn't left the hospital since his incarceration 15 years before.
How is it, then, that Claire Argent's assistant, Heidi Ott, swears she heard Peake say, "Dr. A. Bad eyes in a box" soon after he hears only the bare fact of her death? And why does Alex find Peake so empathetic, in spite of his violent past and chillingly vacant mind? When other mutilated bodies turn up, Alex and Milo begin to suspect that the real monster is very much at large.
Like Kellerman's 12 previous Alex Delaware mysteries, Monster builds to a big, teeth-clenching bang and ends with some very satisfying surprises. --Barrie Trinkle
Motive (Alex Delaware, #30)
Jonathan Kellerman
Even hundreds of closed cases to his credit can't keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonising over the crimes that don't get solved - and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end - one even psychologist Alex Delaware's expert insight can't explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case - because there is always a next one.
This time the victim is Ursula Corey, a successful, attractive divorcee who's been gunned down - not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of suspect: the dead woman's business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they're zeroing in on the killer, a bizarre new clue stirs up echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the spectre of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness.
Mystery (Alex Delaware, #26)
Jonathan Kellerman
Few know the city of Los Angeles the way #1 bestselling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure L.A. noir—and vintage Kellerman.
The closing of their favorite romantic rendezvous, the Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills, is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna. And gathering one last time with their fellow faithful habitués for cocktails in the gracious old venue makes for a bittersweet evening. But even more poignant is a striking young woman—alone and enigmatic among the revelers—waiting in vain in elegant attire and dark glasses that do nothing to conceal her melancholy. Alex can’t help wondering what her story is, and whether she’s connected to the silent, black-suited bodyguard lingering outside the hotel.
Two days later, Alex has even more to contemplate when police detective Milo Sturgis comes seeking his psychologist comrade’s insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex’s shock, the brutalized victim is the same beautiful woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne at the Fauborg may have been her last.
But with a mutilated body and no DNA match, she remains as mysterious in death as she seemed in life. And even when a tipster’s sordid revelation finally cracks the case open, the dark secrets that spill out could make Alex and Milo’s best efforts to close this horrific crime not just impossible but fatal.
Night Moves (Alex Delaware, #33)
Jonathan Kellerman
A brilliant criminal psychologist, Alex Delaware works with the police to help solve the most complex of crimes in Los Angeles, city of illusions, glamour and infamy.
An affluent family returns home from Sunday dinner only to find the murdered and brutalized corpse of a total stranger in their house. This baffling, twisted tale tests Alex and Milo to their intellectual and emotional limits.
Obsession (Alex Delaware, #21)
Jonathan Kellerman
With scores of millions of books in print, translation into two dozen languages, and one of the most popular heroes in contemporary fiction to his name, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman is the unequivocal “master of the psychological thriller” (People). In his newest novel Kellerman delivers a tour de force–poignant, dark, and chilling–that illuminates a shadowy world where impulse rules.
Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, she still seems older than her years–but her problems go beyond hyper-maturity. Patty Bigelow, Tanya’s aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware’s help. The doctor recalls Patty as a selfless E.R. nurse struggling to raise a child on her own–a woman seemingly incapable of the “terrible thing” she has admitted. But for Tanya’s peace of mind, Delaware agrees to investigate, and he enlists LAPD detective Milo Sturgis in the search for the phantom victim of a crime that may never have occurred.
Armed with only the vaguest details, psychologist and cop follow a trail twisting from L.A.’s sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanya’s nomadic and increasingly puzzling life to the doorsteps of a sullen heroin addict; a randy real-estate broker; and a brilliant, enigmatic physics student. Suddenly a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets–and bodies–are buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and death–a legacy of evil that refuses to die.
Open Season (Alex Delaware, #40)
Jonathan Kellerman
Psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis become embroiled in an all-out race against time to find a twisted assassin in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).Los Angeles is a city of stars, a city of strivers and wannabes. Not everyone can shine bright, but they’ll burn themselves up for a glimpse of the high life. LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis knows it all too The best dreamers often make the worst monsters.The body of an aspiring actress has been found—and she’d been drugged. The main suspect is a stunt double with the ego of an action star. He’s more brawn than brains, it seems, with few boundaries when it comes to women. But he’s offed before Milo and Alex can get to him. Worse yet, the rifle that killed him was used in a prior case . . . and another case before that. And then it's fired again and again, taking victims right under their noses.They begin to think that someone is avenging the victims of men without boundaries—but is this a slick, efficient assassin with their own corrupt code of justice, or a knight errant, one who doesn’t want to be seen, but still wants to be known?Alex and Milo soon find themselves in the thick of a truly complicated and twisted case—one with no shortage of suspects or victims that takes them on a wild ride through the surreal underbelly of Los Angeles.
Over the Edge (Alex Delaware, #3)
Jonathan Kellerman
From the New York Times bestselling author, a thrilling novel in the Alex Delaware series about a psychotic teenage boy accused of six murders.When the phone rings in the middle of the night, child psychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through the dream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, the patient he had failed five years before—and who now calls with a bizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon Oaks Psychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in the hands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous Lavender Slasher, a psychotic serial killer. Wooed by a high-powered attorney to build a defense, Alex will get a chance to do what he couldn’t five years ago. And when he peers into a family’s troubled history and Jamey’s brilliant, tormented mind, the psychologist puts himself at the heart of a high-profile case. Because Alex knows that in a realm of money, loss, and madness, something terrible pushed Jamey over the edge—or else someone is getting away with murder.
Private Eyes (Alex Delaware, #6)
Jonathan Kellerman
It's been 11 years since seven-year-old Melissa Dickinson found help in therapy with Dr. Alex Delaware. Now the young heiress desperately calls for help once more. Only this time it looks like her deepest childhood nightmare is coming true.
When she calls, Alex remembers the little girl, but now she's a young woman. She seems well adjusted, too. But she is worried about her mother Gina Dickinson who had been assaulted and disfigured some two decades earlier. The man responsible is now out of prison and back in Los Angeles. Will he come after Gina again? And then she disappears. Alex and has friend Milo Sturgis search for answers.
Rage (Alex Delaware, #19)
Jonathan Kellerman
In a host of consecutive bestsellers, Jonathan Kellerman has kept readers spellbound with the intense, psychologically acute adventures of Dr. Alex Delaware–and with excursions through the raw underside of L.A. and the coldest alleys of the criminal mind. Rage offers a powerful new case in point, as Delaware and LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis revisit a horrifying crime from the past that has taken on shocking and deadly new dimensions.
Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age twenty-one, he’s emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need: to talk–once again–with psychologist Alex Delaware. But the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation never takes place.
Has karma caught up with Rand? Or has someone waited for eight patient years to dine on ice-cold revenge? Both seem strong possibilities to Sturgis, but Delaware’s suspicions run deeper . . . and darker. Because fear in the voice of the grownup Rand Duchay–and his eerie final words to Alex: “I’m not a bad person”–betray untold secrets. Buried revelations so horrendous, and so damning, they’re worth killing for.
As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake–and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight.
Rukous kuollelta (Alex Delaware, #8)
Jonathan Kellerman
Ensin kuuluu pelkkää suhinaa. Sitten ihmisen ääni, kurkkua repivää ulvontaa ja kuin ansaan jääneen eläimen läähätystä. Jälleen suhinaa. Sitten lapsen ääni: Pahaa rakkautta. Pahaa rakkautta. Älä tarjoa minulle pahaa rakkautta.
Lapsen äänenväri - mutta ei lapsen puheen nuottiaLuonnottoman väritön, robottimainen. Loitsu toistuu neljä kertaa ja on melkein kuin rukous, mutta siitä puuttuu usko. Se on rukous kuoleelta.
Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children
Jonathan Kellerman
This thought-provoking and timely book from a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and noted child psychologist reveals the factors that often lead to explosive and shocking juvenile violence.
“Ethically and morally, kids are works in progress. Throw in psychopathy and you’ve got a soul that will never be complete.”
In this powerful, disturbing book, bestselling author and noted child psychologist Jonathan Kellerman shines a penetrating light on antisocial youth—kids who kill without remorse—asserting that “psychopathic tendencies begin very early in life, as young as three, and they endure.” Criticizing our quick impulse to blame violent movies or a “morally bankrupt” society, Kellerman convinces us that it is the kids themselves who need to be examined. Carefully.
How do children become cold-blooded killers? Kellerman warns that today’s aggressive bully is tomorrow’s Mafia don, cult leader, or genocidal dictator. Violently psychopathic youths possess an overriding need for power, control, and stimulation, and all display a complete lack of regard for the humanity of others. He examines the origins of psychopathy and the ever-shifting debate between nurture and nature, offering some controversial solutions to dealing with homicidal tendencies in children.
As timely as today’s headlines, more gripping than fiction, Savage Spawn is a provocative look at the links between society and biology, children and violence. Kellerman’s sobering message will remain with you long after the last page is turned.
Self-Defense (Alex Delaware, #9)
Jonathan Kellerman
Dr. Alex Delaware doesn’t see many private patients anymore, but the young woman called Lucy is an exception. So is her dream. Lucy Lowell is referred to Alex by Los Angeles police detective Milo Sturgis. A juror at the agonizing trial of a serial killer, Lucy survived the trauma only to be tormented by a recurring nightmare: a young child in the forest at night, watching a strange and furtive act.
Now Lucy’s dream is starting to disrupt her waking life, and Alex is concerned. The power of the dream, its grip on Lucy’s emotions, suggests to him that it may be more than a nightmare. It may be the repressed childhood memory of something very real. Something like murder.
Serpentine (Alex Delaware, #36)
Jonathan Kellerman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis search for answers to a brutal, decades-old crime in this electrifying psychological thriller from the master of suspense.LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he's written his own rule book. Some of those successes--the toughest ones--have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn't call Alex in unless cases are "different." This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo's independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases--the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.
The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.
This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.
Silent Partner (Alex Delaware, #4)
Jonathan Kellerman
The bestselling author of When The Bough Breaks, Blood Test, and Over The Edge delivers the most stunning novel yet and featuring psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware...
At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex encounters a face from his own past--Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that he desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide.
Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life--a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the dark closets of a family's disturbing past, and finally into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.
Survival of the Fittest (Alex Delaware, #12)
Jonathan Kellerman
In this riveting follow-up to the "New York Times" best-selling "The Clinic, " psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware confronts an almost unimaginably cruel, arrogant, and obsessed killer who takes as much pleasure in matching wits with the police as in robbing human life--all in the name of science.The nightmare started with a single crime: the murder of 15-year-old Irit Carmeli, the daughter of the Israeli consul in Los Angeles. But within days it had become one of the darkest, most menacing cases of Alex Delaware's career: three young people dead with no apparent motive, and the only trait linking them is the fact that each has a disability. Driven to find the answers, Alex will work closely with his longtime friend Milo Sturgis of the LAPD, but with Inspector Daniel Shavari, the brilliant Israeli detective who solved the serial murders in Kellerman's best-selling novel, "The Butcher's Theater." In the end, though, it is Alex who will go undercover to expose the smug brutality of self-styled elite who will justify their bloody deeds by any means.
"Survival of the Fittest" is Kellerman's most provocative and disturbing novel yet. In portraying the chilling consequences of pseudo-science he shows yet again why he has been called "crime fiction's hottest author."
The Burning
Jonathan Kellerman
Things get personal for Deputy Coroner Clay Edison when a murder hits close to home in this riveting, emotional thriller from the bestselling father-son team who write “brilliant, page-turning fiction” (Stephen King).
A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home.
For Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble.
Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow.
And now he’s gone AWOL.
The race is on for Clay to find him before anyone else can. Confronted with Luke’s legacy of violence, Clay is forced to reckon with his own suspicions, resentments, and loyalties. Is his brother a killer? Or could he be the victim in all of this, too?
This is Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman at their most affecting and page-turning—a harrowing collision of family, revenge, and murder.
The Butcher's Theater
Jonathan Kellerman
They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found. From the sacred Wailing Wall to the monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political passions to hunt for a murderer whos insatiable taste for young women could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.
A brilliant novel by a master of the genre, a vivid look at the tortured complexities of a psychopath's mind, a rich evocation of a city steeped in history -- this, and more, is The Butcher's Theater .
The Clinic (Alex Delaware, #11)
Jonathan Kellerman
This Alex Delaware thriller sees the detective investigating the brutal murder of psychology professor Hope Devane. He gradually unlocks the private compartments of Dr Devane's life and her baffling link to another murder victim, revealing the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.
The Conspiracy Club
Jonathan Kellerman
When his passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, young psychologist Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover's grisly demise --- and eyed warily by police still seeking a prime suspect in the slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work at City Central Hospital --- only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn. As the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies, the only way for him to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the deadly trail of a modern-day Jack the Ripper.
The Ghost Orchid (Alex Delaware #39)
Jonathan Kellerman
Psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis confront a baffling, vicious double homicide that leads them to long-buried secrets worth killing for in the riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).
LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis sees it all the time: Reinvention’s a way of life in a city fueled by fantasy. But try as you might to erase the person you once were, there are those who will never forget the past . . . and who can still find you.
A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor named Meagin March. A married neighbor.
An illicit affair stoking rage is a perfect motive. But a “double” in this neighborhood of gated estates isn’t something you see every day. The house is untouched. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. The case has “that feeling,” and when that happens, Milo turns to his friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware.
As Milo and Alex investigate both victims, they discover two troubled pasts. And as they dig deeper, Meagin March’s very identity begins to blur. Who was this glamorous but conflicted woman? Did her past catch up to her? Or did Gio’s family connections create a threat spanning two continents?
Chasing down the answers leads Alex and Milo on an exploration of L.A.’s darkest side as they contend with one of the most shocking cases of their careers and learn that that some secrets are best left buried in the past.
The Lost Coast (Clay Edison, #5)
Jonathan Kellerman
The gripping new Clay Edison thriller from the bestselling father-son team who write "brilliant, page-turning fiction" (Stephen King)
It's been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner's bureau. Now he's on his own, working as a private eye. When a client brings him a fraud case, Clay dives into a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable. His investigation leads him to a bizarre town buried in the remote California wilderness. The residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to shut him up.
The Murder Book (Alex Delaware, #16)
Jonathan Kellerman
In seventeen consecutive bestselling novels, Jonathan Kellerman has distinguished himself as the master of the psychological thriller. Now in Kellerman's most compelling and powerful novel yet, L.A. psychologist-detective Alex Delaware confronts a long-unsolved murder of unspeakable brutality -- an ice-cold case whose resolution threatens his survival, and that of longtime friend, homicide detective, Milo Sturgis.
The nightmare begins when Alex receives a strange package in the mail with no return address. Inside is an ornate album filled with gruesome crime scene photos -- a homicide scrapbook entitled The Murder Book. Alex can find no reason for anyone to send him this compendium of death, but when Milo views the book, he is immediately shaken by one of the images: a young woman, tortured, strangled, and dumped near a freeway ramp. This was one of Milo's first cases as a rookie homicide cop: a vicious killing that he failed to solve, because just as he and his training partner began to make headway, the department closed them down. Being forced to abandon the young victim tormented Milo. But his fears prevented him from pursuing the truth, and over the years he managed to forget. Or so he thought.
Now, two decades later, someone has chosen to stir up the past. As Alex and Milo set out to uncover what really happened twenty years ago, their every move is followed and their lives are placed in jeopardy. The relentless investigation reaches deep into L.A.'s nerve-centers of power and wealth-past and present. While peeling back layer after layer of ugly secrets, they discover that the murder of one forgotten girl has chilling ramifications that extend far beyond the tragic loss of a single life.
A classic story of good and evil, sacrifice and sin, The Murder Book is a gripping page-turner that illuminates the darkest corridors of the human mind. It is a stunning tour de force.
The Murderer's Daughter
Jonathan Kellerman
A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches—perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.
Both Grace and her newest patient are stunned when they recognize each other from a recent encounter. Haunted by his bleak past, mild-mannered Andrew Toner is desperate for Grace’s renowned therapeutic expertise and more than willing to ignore their connection. And while Grace is tempted to explore his case, which seems to eerily echo her grim early years, she refuses—a decision she regrets when a homicide detective appears on her doorstep.
An evil she thought she’d outrun has reared its head again, but Grace fears that a police inquiry will expose her double life. Launching her own personal investigation leads her to a murderously manipulative foe, one whose warped craving for power forces Grace back into the chaos and madness she’d long ago fled.
The Museum of Desire (Alex Delaware, #35)
Jonathan Kellerman
ONE NIGHT OF HEDONISM. FOUR MURDER VICTIMS.
A run-down mansion nestled between Beverley Hills and the San Fernando Valley is leased out for one night to house a party big enough to herald the end of days.
When a limo is discovered in the grounds of the house the morning after with four dead bodies inside, a mind-bending case begins.
With no link between the four people in the car, and each of the victims murdered in a different way, psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis are about to begin their grisliest and most baffling case yet.
And as they struggle to make sense of the vicious mass slaying, they will be forced to confront a level of lust and evil for which their combined wisdom can provide no preparation.
Therapy (Alex Delaware, #18)
Jonathan Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman has made the psychological thriller his own gripping province with his bestselling series of Alex Delaware novels. Now, Delaware’s new adventure leads the sleuthing psychologist on a harrowing exploration into the realm he knows best: the human psyche, in all its complexity, mystery, and terrifying propensity for darkness.
“Been a while since I had me a nice little whodunit,” homicide detective Milo Sturgis tells Alex Delaware. But there’s definitely nothing nice about the brutal tableau behind the yellow crime-scene tape. On a lonely lover’s lane in the hills of Los Angeles, a young couple lies murdered in a car. Each bears a single gunshot wound to the head. The female victim has also been impaled by a metal spike. And that savage stroke of psychopathic fury tells Milo this case will call for more than standard police procedure. As he explains to Delaware, “Now we’re veering into your territory.”
It is dark territory, indeed. The dead woman remains unidentified and seemingly unknown to everyone. But her companion has a name: Gavin Quick—and his troubled past eventually landed him on a therapist’s couch. It’s there, on familiar turf, that Delaware hopes to find vital clues. And that means going head-to-head with Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, a popular celebrity psychologist who fiercely guards the privacy of her clients . . . dead or alive.
But when there’s another gruesomely familiar murder, Delaware surmises that his investigation has struck a nerve. As he trolls the twisted wreckage of Quick’s tormented last days, what he finds isn’t madness, but the cold-blooded method behind it. And as he follows a chain of greed, corruption, and betrayal snaking hideously through the profession he thought he knew, he’ll discover territory where even he never dreamed of treading.
As provocative as it is suspenseful, Therapy is premier Kellerman that finds the award-winning author firing on all creative cylinders—and carrying readers on an electrifying ride to a place only he can take them, for an experience they won’t soon forget.
The Web (Alex Delaware, #10)
Jonathan Kellerman
Dr. Woodrew Moreland, a respected scientist, has invited Alex Delaware, psychologist/detective, to his home on a tiny Pacific island to help him organize his papers for publication. It's a light workload leaving plenty of time for Alex and his girlfriend, Robin, to relax.
Quickly, however, secretive houseguests and unexplained visitors dim the pleasures of deep blue water and white sands. Alex can't help wondering why Dr. Moreland really invited him to the island. When he probes, Alex discovers a sour and unwelcome truth. But truth it is, and its discovery comes just in time to save Alex and Robin from the violence that threatens them.
The Wedding Guest (Alex Delaware, #34)
Jonathan Kellerman
The electrifying new Alex Delaware thriller from global bestseller Jonathan Kellerman. First comes love...then comes murder.
In the middle of a 'Saints and Sinners' themed wedding, a bridesmaid finds a young woman's corpse collapsed in the bathroom. None of the wedding guests claim to know the well-dressed victim but psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis aren't so convinced.
Time Bomb (Alex Delaware, #5)
Jonathan Kellerman
Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more explores the corruption of California and produces a novel of complex characterizations and nonstop suspense.
Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware was called. Unfortunately, by the time he reached the school, the damage was done. A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground, but was gunned down before any children were hurt.
"Though a time bomb is ticking away at the heart of this novel, readers will forget to watch the clock once they begin it." 'Chicago Sun Times.'
While the TV news crews feasted on the scene, Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children. But he couldn't escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was behind the name and face? A would-be assassin, or just another victim beneath an indifferent California sky?
Intrigued by a request from the sniper's father to conduct a "psychological autopsy" of his child, Alex begins to uncover a strange pattern of innocence, neglect, and loss. Then suddenly it is more than a pattern, it is a trail of blood. In the dead sniper's past was a dark and vicious plot. And in Alex Delaware's future is the stuff of grown-up nightmares: the face of real human evil.
Twisted (Petra Connor, #2)
Jonathan Kellerman
Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman’s New York Times bestseller Billy Straight she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense.
Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified–and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it’s another case destined for the cold file–until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.
Finding her elusive quarry–alive–isn’t all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn’t doing much better. If all that wasn’t enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he’s stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date–a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years–and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.
Unnatural History (Alex Delaware, #38)
Jonathan Kellerman
The most enduring detectives in American crime fiction are back in this electrifying thrillerof art and brutalityfrom the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.
Los Angeles is a city of stark contrast, the palaces of the affluent coexisting uneasily with the hellholes of the mad and the needy. It is that shadow world and the violence it breeds that draw brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis into an unsettling case of altruism gone wrong.
On a superficially lovely morning a woman shows up for work with her usual enthusiasm. She’s the newly hired personal assistant to a handsome, wealthy photographer and is ready to greet her boss with coffee and good cheer. Instead, she finds him slumped in bed, shot to death.
The victim had recently received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies. There are some, however, who view the whole thing as nothing more than crass exploitation, citing token payments and the victim’s avoidance of any long-term relationships with his subjects.
Has disgruntlement blossomed into homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim’s family—a clan, sired by an elusive billionaire, that is bizarre in its own right?
Then new murders arise, and Alex and Milo begin peeling back layer after layer of intrigue and complexity, culminating in one of the deadliest threats they’ve ever faced.
Victims (Alex Delaware, #27)
Jonathan Kellerman
Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 bestselling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition. For the compelling proof, look no further than Victims —Kellerman at his razor-sharp, harrowing finest.
Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion . . . yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind—a blank page bearing a question mark—seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.
Under pressure to end the bloody spree and prevent a citywide panic, Milo redoubles his efforts to discover a link between the disparate victims. Meanwhile, Alex navigates the secretive world of mental health treatment, from the sleek office of a Beverly Hills therapist to a shuttered mental institution where he once honed his craft—and where an unholy alliance between the mad and the monstrous may have been sealed in blood. As each jagged piece of the puzzle fits into place, an ever more horrific portrait emerges of a sinister mind at its most unimaginable—and an evil soul at its most unspeakable. “This one was different,” Alex observes at the start of the case. This one will haunt his waking life, and his darkest dreams, long after its end.
When the Bough Breaks (Alex Delaware, #1)
Jonathan Kellerman
The first Alex Delaware novel. It's a good one!
We meet Dr. Morton Handler who practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.
Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job is to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. As the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.
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