NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The past comes back to haunt psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis when they investigate a grisly double homicide and uncover an even more unspeakable motive in this riveting thriller from the bestselling master of suspense.
Los Angeles is a city of sunlight, celebrity, and possibility. The L.A. often experienced by Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, is a city of the dead.
Early one morning, the two of them find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars, and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home.
Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case. Cordelia Gannett was a self-styled internet influencer who’d gotten into legal troubles by palming herself off as a psychologist. Even after promising to desist, she’s found a loophole and has continued her online career, aiming to amass clicks and ads by cyber-coaching and cyber-counseling people plagued with relationship issues.
But upon closer examination, Alex and Milo discover that her own relationships are troublesome, including a tortured family history and a dubious personal past. Has that come back to haunt her in the worst way? Is the mystery man out in the street collateral damage or will he turn out to be the key to solving a grisly double homicide? As the psychologist and the detective explore L.A.'s meanest streets, they peel back layer after layer of secrets and encounter a savage, psychologically twisted, almost unthinkable motive for violence and bloodshed.
This is classic Delaware: Alex, a man Milo has come to see as irreplaceable, at his most insightful and brilliant.
City of the Dead is the 37th Alex Delaware procedural mystery by Jonathan Kellerman. Released 8th Feb 2022 by Penguin Random House on their Ballantine imprint, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This has been such a solid and dependable long-running series. The returning characters are so well defined at this point, with so much background written in, that they really seem to live and breathe. Dr. Delaware himself is always insightful and the "odd couple" aspects of his relationship with Milo Sturgis are fun and engaging to read. I don't think I'm familiar with a series which is this long running which doesn't have moments which feel less vital and less well written. This series has delivered solidly since 1985 which is stupendous.
This is a modern procedural and, as in the other books, the descriptions and themes can be graphic. There are aspects of aberrant psychology or behavior and themes which may be upsetting for some readers.
The mystery itself and all necessary back-story are written in, so it works quite well as a standalone. I recommend the whole series, but readers who are new to the characters won't have any trouble keeping up.
Four stars. A solid mystery in a solid, very long-running series.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes
