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Overview
Who killed the killer? In his brilliant and startling new novel, Jonathan Kellerman, perennial bestselling author and premier proprietor of the psychological thriller, gives a sharp and timely twist to homicide's central question.Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate--a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of Mate's own suicide van, hooking him up to the killing apparatus dubbed "the Humanitron"--and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns, once again, to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware. But working this case raises a conflict of interest for Alex so profound that he can't even discuss it with Milo. The tension that develops between cop and psychologist further complicates an already baffling and complex murder investigation--one whose suspects include the families of Dr. Mate's "travelers," Mate's own son, and a psychopathic killer who relishes the geometry of death.
Dr. Death is a rich brew of unforgettable characters, labyrinthine plotting, page-turning prose, and the unique insights into the darkest corners of the human mind that have earned Jonathan Kellerman international accolades as the master of psychological suspense.
From the Hardcover edition.
Dr. Death had snuffed out the lives of dozens of human beings and now someone had turned him into a victim. When Mate is found mutilated in a rented van, harnessed to his own killing machine, Delaware is asked to aid his old friend, homicide cop Milo Sturgis, in the hunt for the death doctor's executioner.
Synopsis
Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate--a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of his own suicide van, hooking Mate up to the killing apparatus dubbed the "humanitron"--and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns, once again, to his friend Alex Delaware. But working this case raises a conflict of interest for Alex so profound that he can't even discuss it with Milo, and the tension that develops between cop and psychologist further complicates an already baffling and complex murder investigation.
Dr. Death is a rich brew of unforgettable chracters, labryinthine plotting, page-turning prose, and the unique insights into the darkest corners of the human mind that have earned Jonathan Kellerman international accolades as the master of psychological suspense.
Publishers Weekly
A series of well-publicized gentle deaths are the work of self-appointed angel of mercy Dr. Eldon Mate, who attends to the terminally ill in cheap hotel rooms or in the back of his van. Now Mate himself is dead, carved up and found by two joggers and their dog on a high road above Los Angeles. Like Kellerman's previous bestsellers, this title features psychologist Alex Delaware, whose self-righteous pomposity blends neatly, as it has before, into a narrative liberally dosed with psycho-angles and agreeably warped murder motives. This time out, Delaware works with cop Milo Sturgis and counsels Stacy and Eric Doss, two teenage children getting over their mother Joanne's death, which Dr. Mate seemingly helped to hasten. In his dual role, Delaware encounters a rogue FBI agent tracking a killer obsessed with Mate; Mate's disturbed son; and Richard Doss, the kids' father, who by slipping cash to a shady character in a dark bar is marked as a prime murder suspect. Joanne's illness too proves mysterious. But Kellerman isn't in top form here. Most annoyingly, the FBI guy does the bulk of the sleuthing legwork, while Delaware spends much of the book either making love or pontificating on motivations for characters all very similarly flawed. The ending is agreeably tricky, but by then great gobs of Delaware have either delighted Kellerman's faithful or else turned readers' stomachs in a way that serial deaths, gentle or otherwise, may have somehow failed to do. Kellerman's rep and the book's strong, geometric cover will send this one on to the lists. (Dec. 5) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Our ReviewDeath Is at Hand
In the 15 years that have passed since When the Bough Breaks was published, Jonathan Kellerman has produced a substantial body of fiction that combines viscerally exciting melodrama with subtlety and psychological complexity. These characteristic virtues are on full display in Dr. Death, Kellerman's 16th novel, and the 14th entry in the bestselling series featuring child psychologist -- and amateur detective -- Alex Delaware.
As the novel opens, Alex has signed on, once again, as an independent consultant to the Los Angeles Police Department. Partnered, as usual, with gay homicide detective Milo Sturgis, Alex finds himself investigating the death of a notorious, Kevorkian-like figure named Eldon Mate, popularly known as "Dr. Death." A controversial advocate of the "right to die," and a direct participant in at least 50 assisted suicides, Mate enters the headlines one last time when his grotesquely mutilated body is found strapped to the "humanitron," a machine designed to facilitate the suicides of terminally ill clients.
Alex's involvement nearly results in an unintended conflict of interest. Some months earlier, Alex had treated a teenaged girl named Stacy Doss, whose mother, Joanne, ended a protracted illness by taking her own life, presumably with Mate's assistance. Richard Doss, Stacey's father and Joanne's husband, bitterly resented the role Mate played in his wife's suicide. A wealthy, powerful man with a hair-trigger temper, Richard is one of a number of people with a viable motive for murder.
As the investigation proceeds, Alex and Milo steadily unearth a string of prospective culprits. Included among them are Mate's lawyer, who disappeared immediately after his client's death; Mate's son, a homeless, possibly psychotic artist whose father abandoned him many years before; and various members of the wealthy, terminally dysfunctional Doss family. Complicating all this is the possible involvement of an unrelated suspect: a traveling serial killer who goes by many names and whose modus operandi eerily mirrors the methods employed by Eldon Mate's killer.
Kellerman assembles his complex, multilayered plot with typical ingenuity, leading Alex through a lethal labyrinth of possibilities toward a violent, ironic conclusion. But Dr. Death is more than just a compelling novel of suspense. Like so much of Kellerman's work, it is also an acute, painfully precise portrait of a family torn apart by internal pressures and by the combined effects of guilt, grief, rage, hatred, and twisted, misplaced love. Dr. Death offers intelligent, compassionate, high-adrenaline entertainment and reaffirms Kellerman's position as one the leading modern practitioners of psychological suspense.
--Bill Sheehan
Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has just been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).