general

If you like Jonathan Kellerman, you'll like this book--but some of the author's most annoying traits are rife in this particular outing, and they frankly drove me crazy.

First, the plot: Therapist Alex Delaware teams up with his police pal Milo Sturgis to help solve what seems at first to be a run-of-the-mill double murder: a young couple have been murdered while parked on a lovers' lane. But these murders are particularly and horribly brutal. The woman has not only been shot, but skewered with an iron bar. It's a big case of overkill, and a little digging unearths a particularly nasty underbelly to the murder and its aftermath.

As Milo and Alex dig into the multiple webs that surround this murder and its motive, the plot gets increasingly difficult, so that the reader has to stop more than once to unravel the latest string and put it in context. I know the author meant that to reflect the puzzle that the two are trying to solve, but it stopped me cold more than once.

And the other thing that stopped me cold many, many times was the endlessly intricate narration of streets and routes that Kellerman affects in each of his books. I grew up in LA. The streets are all real, and I know most of them. So when he says, "I drove down Robertson to Pico," I know exactly what he is talking about, and I have to stop reading to visualize it. This time out, he actually gets into the minute details of a neighborhood in which I grew up, and we're talking streets, hills, even foliage. WHY does he do this? Does anybody in the entire world need to know the in-depth "Mapquest" routing of every ride that Delaware takes? It's gone from simple author quirk to something so annoying that it takes away from each and every book he writes, and this one truly is the worst.

I can't say that "Therapy" isn't a fun book, especially as summertime reading. I finished it in a day. But be warned: Unless you enjoy map-reading for fun and pleasure, prepare to be annoyed throughout the otherwise fast-paced mystery.

I love Jonathan Kellerman's stories about Alex Delaware and his friend Milo Sturgis, but this one, like Mr. Kellerman's last book "Conspiracy Club," was not up to par.

The plot got bogged down in the intricacies of government funding and Medi-Cal billing. The average citizen dislikes dealing with insurance in real life, so why would they want to read about it in their spare time? Too many characters contributed to this problem. I found it hard to care about Gavin Quick, and it was even harder to figure out whether he was a bad guy or a good guy. Ditto for his father, aunt, and ex-girlfriend. And why the long ramble about the girl who was found in the car with him? Background is one thing, Mr. Kellerman, but superfluous writing is quite another.

Go back to psychology and murder, and leave the California insurance business alone, Mr. Kellerman. Your books are much more enjoyable that way.

i've found kellerman and his wife's stuff were all mediocre and bored to death. he's one of the writers who i've dumped long time ago with tony hillerman, james patterson, jeffrey parker, lawrence block....since they've been dumped by me so long ago, i just couldn't remember the full rejected list. to me, they are small-timer writers, could only deliver small-timer-like characters with small-timer-like formatted stories with lame-duck-like plots, not even worth to burn the oil and lose your balance sheet. to me, james patterson is just like a lousy serial killer who could not do the real serial killings by himself but found out a way to ask the clueless readers to pay for his imaginery kills. as to kellerman, well, if i really got any psychi problem, i won't go to him to seek cure either. before he telling me time's up, i've already left long time ago. so far, his only great creations are his books' titles.