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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:Once again, the depths of the criminal mind and the darkest side of a glittering city fuel #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellermanâ??s brilliant storytelling. And no one conducts a more harrowing and suspenseful manhunt than the modern Sherlock Holmes of the psyche, Dr. Alex Delaware. A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killerâ??s use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware. What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges; across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers; and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade. The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and deathâ??and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman's Vict… (more)
User reviews
His earliest books are crammed with tortured literary metaphors, often jarringly inappropriate and distracting. All of his characters tended to speak with the same voice -- an irritating flaw, like the hoarse monotones of the characters in the NYPD BLUE TV series. Kellerman's characters in the Alex Delaware books all speak in short, choppy sentences, with little emotional inflection. And it has been justly noted that Kellerman seems to pay as much attention to how his characters dress as to his plots -- the over-abundance of detail weighs down many of his books.
But COMPULSION was a welcome surprise. Kellerman's writing was tauter, his characters more individually drawn, and there was a welcome dearth of tortured metaphors. The plot zipped along, with fewer conspiratorial red-herrings than some of his earlier books.
I found the story so gripping that I literally finished it in one sitting, and when I put down the book, I had the internal glow of having read something worthwhile, interesting, and satisfyingly filling.
Highly recommended, particularly to Kellerman's legion of fans.
The mystery is not so interesting and frankly forgettable. This is a good beach/plane book, you can sit with it and finish it, and then leave it on the bench for the next person to pick up and read.
Milo is a far more interesting character, and I think Kellerman should consider writing from his perspective. The shrink plus cop buddy formula used to work pretty well, but only when Dr. Delaware actually did some in-person analysis of people instead of vaguely diagnosing sociopathy from afar, as he did here. There was really very little psychology involoved in the story. Maybe the author is just getting stale, but this book was pretty dang boring. I considered not finishing it, but decided I had nothing better to do on my sickbed. Don't waste your time.
Despite the lukewarm reviews for
Then there is a financial genius who mentions his luxury car was stolen but returned, and a request by a condemned death row inmate who can offer the whereabouts for a missing 15 year old young man, and you have threads and twists of those threads that kept my attention riveted.
What I like about Kellerman's writing is how well and compassionately he draws his characters. Yes, Alex and Milo are able to pull all-nighters and speak in coherent sentences the next day, which is a trademark of any detective fiction, but throw in a whiny son and a sex-changed prostitute and a potential suspect who seems to disappear and re-appear at will, and I found myself reading "just one more" to find out what, really, was going to happen next.
Once again, Delaware and Sturgis are investigating what