Kellerman, Jonathan

Obsession: An Alex Delaware Novel (Alex Delaware Novels)

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.

Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with the psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunit–and something unique: a did-it-even-happen? This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best.


From the Hardcover edition.

Self-Defense (Alex Delaware)

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.

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.

"Exciting... loaded with tension and packed with titillating insights."
   THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Kellerman at his best."
   USA TODAY

"Satisfying... suspenseful."
   PLAYBOY

Blood Test (Alex Delaware)

It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life.

Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope--only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty--except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.

Now Alex and his friend, homocide detective Milo Sturgis, have no choice but to push the law to the breaking point. They've entered an amoral underworld where drugs, dreams, and sex are all for sale...where fantasies are fulfilled at any price--even at the cost of a young boy's life.

When the Bough Breaks (Alex Delaware)

In the first Alex Delaware novel, Dr.  Morton Handler 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.

It's psychologist Dr. Alex  Delaware's job to try to unlock the terrible secret  buried in Melody's memory. But 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.

Time Bomb (Alex Delaware)

Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more  explores the corruption of California's golden  coast and produces a novel of complex  characterizations and nonstop suspense.  By the time psychologist Dr. Alex  Delaware 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.  While  the TV news crews feasted on the scene an Alex  began his therapy sessions with the traumatized  children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight  teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the  identity 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.

Also available on BDD Audio Cassette.

Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more explores the corruption of California's golden coast and produces a novel of complex characterizations and nonstop suspense.

By the time psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware 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. While the TV news crews feasted on the scene an Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the identity 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.

"A meticulously constructed thriller."
   PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Virtually impossible to put aside until the final horrifying showdown."
   PEOPLE

"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

"Scythe-sharp... A great, good read."
   NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Silent Partner (Alex Delaware)

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.

Also available on BDD Audio Cassette.

The bestselling author of The Murder Book and A Cold Heart 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 she 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.

Private Eyes (Alex Delaware)

The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex  Delaware remembers a little girl. It is eleven  years since seven-years-old Melissa Dickinson dialed  a hospital help line for comfort--and found it in  therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young  heiress is desperately calling for psychologist's  help once more. Only this time it looks like  Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really  coming true ...  Twenty years ago, Gina Dickinson, Melissa's  mother, suffered a grisly assault that left the budding  actress irreparably scarred and emotionally  crippled. Now her acid-wielding assailant is out of  prison and back in L.A.--and Melissa is terrified  that the monster has returned to hurt Gina again.  But before Alex Delaware  can even begin to soothe his former patient's  fears, Gina, a recluse for twenty, disappears. And  now, unless Delaware turns crack detective to  uncover the truth, Gina Dickinson will be just one  more victim of a cold fury that has already spawned  madness--and murder.

The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex Delaware remembers a little girl. It is eleven years since seven-year-old Melissa Dickinson dialed a hospital help line for comfort -- and found it in therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young heiress is desperately calling for the psychologist's help once more. Only this time it looks like Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really coming true...

Twenty years ago, Gina Dickinson, Melissa's mother, suffered a grisly assault that left the budding actress irreparably scarred and emotionally crippled. Now her acid-wielding assailant is out of prison and back in L.A. -- and Melissa is terrified that the monster has returned to hurt Gina again.

But before Alex Delaware can even begin to soothe his former patient's fears, Gina, a recluse for twenty years, disappears. And now, unless Delaware turns crack detective to uncover the truth, Gina Dickinson will be just one more victim of a cold fury that has already spawned madness -- and murder.

Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware)

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.

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.

The Clinic (Alex Delaware)

Former child psychologist Jonathan Kellerman brings us the 11th installment in the reliable series featuring child psychologist Alex Delaware. Here Delaware teams up again with his old friend Detective Milo Sturgis of the LAPD to investigate the brutal murder of Dr. Hope Devane. Her bestselling book about how men victimize women made her famous; did it also lead to her death? As Sturgis and Delaware begin probing into the details of her life, they find more and more secrets and slowly close in on a killer filled with hate. As usual, Kellerman combines convincing psychological portraits with good dialogue and a plot that coils to a tense finish.

Upon his return to Los Angeles from a harrowing adventure in the South Pacific, Alex is called upon by his friend Milo Sturgis to help solve the murder of a celebrity author.

For three months the police found no clues to the murder of Hope Devane, psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych bestseller about men. She was found stabbed to death on a quiet, shaded street in one of L.A.'s best neighborhoods. The evidence suggested not random slaughter, but cold, calculated stalking. And the list of potential suspects was as extensive as the audience for her book and her talk show appearances.

Newly assigned to the cold case, homicide detective Milo Sturgis calls on his friend, Dr. Alex Delaware to seek out insights into the victim's high-profile life. What Alex uncovers is a series of troubling inconsistencies about Hope, including her contradictory personas: the sensational, anti-male bestselling author versus the low-key scholarly university professor.

But it is when Alex delves into Hope's childhood that he begins to understand the forces that made her the formidable woman she was--and the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.

Upon his return to Los Angeles from a harrowing adventure in the South Pacific, Alex Delaware is called upon by his friend Milo Sturgis to help solve the murder of a celebrity author.

For three months the police found no clues to the murder of Hope Devane, psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych bestseller about men.

She was found stabbed to death on a quiet, shaded street in one of L.A.'s best neighborhoods. The evidence suggested not random slaughter, but cold, calculated stalking. And the list of potential suspects was as extensive as the audience for her book and her talk show appearances.

Newly assigned to the cold case, homicide detective Milo Sturgis calls on his friend, Dr. Alex Delaware to seek out insights into the victim's high-profile life. What Alex uncovers is a series of troubling inconsistencies about Hope, including her contradictory personas: the sensational, anti-male bestselling author versus the low-key scholarly university professor.

But it is when Alex delves into Hope's childhood that he begins to understand the forces that made her the formidable woman she was -- and the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.

Survival of the Fittest (Alex Delaware)

Legendary L.A. psychologist-turned-novelist Kellerman raids real life when inventing the adventures of his psychologist sleuth, Dr. Alex Delaware, and some of the scariest parts of Survival of the Fittest are historical. Eugenicists lurk behind a murder spree Alex must solve, and he notes that the eugenics movement involved one elite U.S. college professor who advocated castration of ethnically lesser men, a forced sterilization ordered by Supreme Court Justice Holmes that Hitler used as a precedent to sterilize millions, and the pre-Holocaust coinage of the phrase "final solution."

Besides a truly horrifying theme, Survival of the Fittest boasts sharp but not arch dialogue; savvy psychological insights into stressed-out cops, suicides' loved ones, and malevolent therapists; and a sense of place so vivid that the Los Angeles Times has rated Kellerman the most evocative L.A. author since Raymond Chandler.

The plot's as twisty as a canyon road, and it's great fun to ride along with Dr. Alex and his sidekick, the burly, gay LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, as they dodge large red herrings and strive to find out why mildly handicapped kids are suffering "gentle strangulation" by killers who sign their handiwork with the mysterious letters DVLL, and what the devil this has to do with the high-IQ group Meta. Bonus for Kellerman fans: his Israeli serial killer catcher, Daniel Sharavi, star of his 1988 bestseller The Butcher's Theater, joins the sleuth team. But in the gory finale, Dr. Alex faces absolute evil all alone. --Tim Appelo

“FEVERISH IN PACE AND RICH IN CHARACTERS . . . THIS IS A CHILLING AND IRRESISTIBLE THRILLER.”
–People

The daughter of a diplomat disappears on a school field trip–lured into the Santa Monica mountains and killed in cold blood. Her father denies the possibility of a political motive. There are no signs of struggle, no evidence of sexual assault, leaving psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to pose the disturbing question: Why?

Working together with Daniel Sharavi, a brilliant Israeli police inspector, Delaware and Sturgis soon find themselves ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of their careers. And when death strikes again, it is Alex who must go undercover, alone, to expose an unthinkable conspiracy of self-righteous brutality and total contempt for human life.

The daughter of a diplomat disappears on a school field trip -- lured into the Santa Monica mountains and killed in cold blood. Her father denies the possibility of a political motive. There are no signs of struggle, no evidence of sexual assault, leaving psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis to pose the disturbing question: Why?

Working together with Daniel Sharavi, a brilliant Israeli police inspector, Delaware and Sturgis soon find themselves ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of their careers. And when death strikes again, it is Alex who must go undercover, alone, to expose an unthinkable conspiracy of self-righteous brutality and total contempt for human life.

"Feverish in pace and rich in characters... This is a chilling and irresistible thriller."
   PEOPLE

"An original and gripping tale that is one of his best."
   CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Why is it so hard to put down a Kellerman thriller...? It's simple: the nonstop action leaves you breathless; the plot twists keep you guessing; the themes... are provocative."
   PUBLISHERS WEEKLY