About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

FLESH AND BLOOD
by Jonathan Kellerman
Random House, November 2001
400 pages
$26.95
ISBN: 0679459626


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I admit to being prejudiced in favor of Kellermanžs books, so be advised. In this one Alex Delaware is on a crusade, one that almost loses him his lover. Lauren Teague had been a patient of his very briefly in the past. She was angry and resentful and uninterested in any kind of therapy and after several sessions quit coming. Then some years later Alex ran into her in an embarrassing situation in which it was obvious she was a high class prostitute. Now her mother calls Alex saying that Lauren is missing and the police will not take the report seriously. She also informs him that Lauren is at the university studying psychology. Alex feels he failed Lauren somehow and when her dead and mutilated body turns up, he feels even more guilty. So he joins Milo in the quest to find the killer.

Delaware thinks Laurenžs murder might be related to the disappearance of another student a year earlier. It seems to the reader that this is quite a leap, but he pursues that angle as well as others. There are several other murders related to Laurenžs death and danger to Alex as well.

You know what to expect from the character of Alex Delaware. He is going to mess around on the edges of the investigation, go off on his own some of the time, join Milo at other times, and use psychological understandings to get at the underlying explanations. Ultimately he will be successful. He probably has not changed very much since the first book in the series. It is true that Kellerman doesnžt take risks with his characters, but the story flows and I found it quite interesting to follow Alex on his journey of atonement.

The books are firmly grounded in Los Angeles and while Kellerman does not make the city into a character as, say, Michael Connelly does, he uses it skillfully as the backdrop against which the action plays. It is not Hollywood, but it is not altogether the mean streets either.

I need to point out that there is explicit sexual language in this book and if that bothers you (and it did me a little), you might not want to pick this up. The violence and actual sex was not gratuitous.

I found several examples of English usage that I, as a purist, dislike. We are all the time making nouns into verbs and the practice offends me (I know. . . get over it). We gift people, we journal, and in this book we have a pair of pines sentrying a door. Oh, well.

As you can tell from the title, this book is about blood relations, flesh and blood, families. Mother and daughter, father and son. What loyalties do they owe to each other? What kinds of things can they drive each other to do? And within the convoluted relationships that make up families grow, sometimes. very dangerous entities. This book demonstrates that very clearly.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, January 2002

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]