Serpentine: An Alex Delaware Novel (Alex Delaware, #36)

by Jonathan Kellerman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis search for answers to a brutal, decades-old crime in this electrifying psychological thriller from the master of suspense.

LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he’s written his own rule book. Some of those successes—the toughest ones—have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn’t call Alex in unless cases are “different.”
This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases—the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.

The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.

This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.

• ISBN10: 0525618554
• ISBN13: 9780525618553
• Publish Date: 2 February 2021
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525618553

Reviews

[Mystereity Reviews]

I was so excited to get this as a "Read Now" on Netgalley that I sat down last night and read every last page. I've been a fan of Alex and Milo for almost 30 years and each book just gets better and better.

This one starts with a cold case, a case so cold, it's frozen shut. Thanks to his stellar solve rate and some politics, Milo is put on the case to help a wealthy young woman find out how her mother ended up dead in a burning car pushed off a cliff. But with next to nothing in the archives, no clues and only a faded picture of the woman, Milo and Alex are forced to start from scratch, weaving together a story of evil that spanned decades.

Very few things make me happier than cracking into a fresh new Kellerman book and this one was no exception. Watching Milo and Alex work is always a pleasure and the intricately woven plot of this nearly-impossible-to-solve case kept me guessing til the end. There were more highs and lows and twists and turns than an alpine race course! And oh man, did I love that ending! Vindication and pure, unadulterated poetic justice. Is there anything better? Nope.

There's so much more I want to say about this one but I'm afraid I'd give too much away, so I'll just say this: if you're looking for a great mystery series, Kellerman's Alex Delaware series is the top of the heap.