Product Description

Once again, the depths of the criminal mind and the darkest side of a glittering city fuel #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman’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 killer’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 death–and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92264 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Released on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Kellerman serves up all the elements his fans have come to love in the 22nd entry in his Alex Delaware series (Obsession, etc.), including an intriguing plot, likable regular characters supported by an interesting secondary cast, diabolical villains, witty dialogue and a sense of humanity and justice. Alex and his LAPD detective partner, Milo Sturgis, are investigating several murders that, at first, appear to have only one thing in common: the perpetrator's use of expensive black automobiles while committing his crimes. Kellerman sticks to his usual modus, the patient and sometimes painfully slow accumulation of detail, as Alex and Milo build their case. A subplot involves a missing child last seen selling magazine subscriptions in a tony neighborhood 16 years earlier. On the domestic front, Alex is again living with his girlfriend, Robin, with whom he has broken up several times over the course of the series. In the end, a nice twist reminds Robin and Alex to be more careful in the future about drawing assumptions in their private life before all the facts have come to light. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
L.A. psychologist Alex Delaware’s insights into human behavior once again prove invaluable to his friend, Lieutenant Milo Sturgis. In the duo’s twenty-first crime outing, narrated as usual by Delaware, a stolen black luxury car provides the two with the first link in a case of brutal murders that ultimately leads to one of Kellerman’s most warped villains. When Sturgis is called in by a young officer to consult on a bloodstain found in a recovered Bentley, Delaware rides along, as he does later when Sturgis hurries to the scene of the brutal stabbing of an elderly woman, which took place in broad daylight. The perpetrator of this second crime was identified as an elderly man driving a pricey black car. Add to this the mystery of a missing thirtysomething party girl, and there’s plenty to occupy investigators. Though their path to success seems less grounded than usual, the comfortable banter that has helped make Delaware and Sturgis such durable crime-story heroes is as rapid-fire, keen, and wryly funny as ever, and the mystery they aim to solve is certainly not routine. Enhanced by an assortment of quirky supporting characters cut from vintage Kellerman cloth, this is a genuine page-turner sure to please the author’s legion of devoted fans. --Stephanie Zvirin

About the Author
Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world’s most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a clinical psychologist to more than two dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, and Twisted. With his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored the bestsellers Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, scientific articles, two children’s books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards, and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California and New Mexico. Their four children include the novelist Jesse Kellerman.

www.jonathankellerman.com


From the Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

2008 Installment in the Alex Delaware Crime Series
It's early spring, time for Jonathan Kellerman's latest addition to his Alex Delaware crime novel series. For those who don't know Alex is an LA psychologists who often works with LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to solve crimes perpetrated by crazed psychopaths. The strength of these novels is Kellerman's clear crisp writing and his knack for describing LA life (in this latest novel Alex also makes a quick trip to Manhattan) for the poor, the mighty and those in between. The weakness is the preposterous elements of some of his latest plots though this years COMPULSION is actually better than last years really unlikely OBSESSION. Another weakness in many of the latest books in the series is Alex's ever annoying, "perfect", girlfriend, Robin, but thankfully she is off stage for most of this outing. Milo, Alex's gay detective sidekick is a much more interesting and sympathetic character.

The plot of COMPULSION involves a series of disparate murders and the victims include a twenty something shop clerk, a retired school teacher and two beauty salon workers. All these crimes seem to have in common is the murderer arrived in a large dark luxury car and the murders were especially brutal. Will Alex and Milo be able to tie the cases together and solve them with one suspect? Well, what do you think? There is also a subplot about a young boy who has been missing for years and of course our heroes are able to tie that crime up too. COMPULSION is a fast paced very readable novel and Kellerman is a good enough writer that this reader forgives his increasing "by the numbers" approach to plotting.

Mediocre outing -- even JK seems tired of our buddy Alex!
We've read every single Alex Delaware novel, so are big fans, well-informed about this series. What started out great - the child psychologist by profession who consults with the police; specifically Milo Sturgis, a gay, very interesting, and persistent homicide cop; on murders where the police feel they need a consultant's help - has resolved into little more than two detective buddies, one paid, the other an amateur hardly more skillful than we at surfing the web, chasing clues until typical procedure dissolves into dénouement. Alex joins Milo seemingly whenever he wants (presumably being paid at premium consultants' rates), often as little more than a pastime, not because his skills are pertinent, which is pretty far-fetched in terms of the state of most public budgets! His relationship with live-in girlfriend Robin, always an on-again, off-again, "affair", barely gets a nod herein, with a silly custom musical instrument buyer paying too much attention to her a lame attempt at stalker suspense, resolved equally poorly in our opinion. Meanwhile, the excuse for the plot, a serious of murders involving luxury autos, barely holds our attention, and while we plodded along to see whodunit, we hardly cared by the time we got there.

To us, the series has run its course. While Milo per se is one of the more interesting police characters to come along over the last couple of decades, and while the original premise of Delaware's involvement was novel, there's virtually nothing left to excite or entertain us. It seems to us we're at that deadly state of an author not knowing what to do or where to go except to the bank, as he churns out contract-fulfilling installments of mediocrity. Sorry `bout that!

Compulsion
I have enjoyed all of Jonathan Kellerman's novel, particularly the ones featuring his Alex Delaware character. Unfortunately, this latest effort stretches the reader's imagination with some particularly convoluted plot logic. We are expected to accept the fact that an internet search for crimes committed with the perpetrator using a large black luxury car should readily yield a common denominator who is then found and brought to justice. No matter that years and continents have separated the victims and the circumstances. I've had many comfortable hours with Jonathan Kellerman's characters and I've been able to excuse most of the plot excesses in the past, but I'm afraid this one is just too much of a stretch.