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Overview
With scores of millions of books in print, translation into two dozen languages, and one of the most popular heroes in contemporary fiction to his name, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman is the unequivocal “master of the psychological thriller” (People). In his newest novel Kellerman delivers a tour de force–poignant, dark, and chilling–that illuminates a shadowy world where impulse rules.
Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, she still seems older than her years–but her problems go beyond hyper-maturity. Patty Bigelow, Tanya’s aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware’s help. The doctor recalls Patty as a selfless E.R. nurse struggling to raise a child on her own–a woman seemingly incapable of the “terrible thing” she has admitted. But for Tanya’s peace of mind, Delaware agrees to investigate, and he enlists LAPD detective Milo Sturgis in the search for the phantom victim of a crime that may never have occurred.
Armed with only the vaguest details, psychologist and cop follow a trail twisting from L.A.’s sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanya’s nomadic and increasingly puzzling life to the doorsteps of a sullen heroin addict; a randy real-estate broker; and a brilliant, enigmatic physics student. Suddenly a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets–and bodies–are buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and death–a legacy of evil that refuses to die.
Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with the psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunit–and something unique: a did-it-even-happen? This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best.
Synopsis
Popular psychologist Alex Delaware returns in this riveting thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman.
Patty Bigelow had finally gotten herself on her feet'bought a home, earned her RN, secured a good job in the ER. And that's when her wild-child sister Leila ran off with a trucker, leaving an eight-year-old daughter on Patty's doorstep. Patty prepares to shoulder the burden as she has so many others, but Tanya proves an unexpected handful. Bewildered, her reluctant guardian enlists the aid of child psychologist Alex Delaware.
Fifteen years later, Tanya is a capable, high-strung young woman mourning the loss of her aunt. She's baffled by Patty's last words, a deathbed confession of murder: "One of the people who lived near us. You got to make it right..."
Publishers Weekly
The 21st Alex Delaware novel (after 2006's Gone) from bestseller Kellerman contains fewer twists than usual for this contemporary thriller series. Once again, Delaware, an accomplished psychologist, teams with his friend Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective, to probe a mystery, though this time there's considerable doubt as to the nature of the puzzle. Teenager Tanya Bigelow, whom Delaware treated as a child for obsessive-compulsive disorder, consults him because her aunt Patty, who raised her, conveyed a cryptic message just before she died, apparently confessing to a crime. Shortly after Delaware and Sturgis start investigating, one of Patty's former neighbors turns up dead, the first in a series of corpses that appear, possibly as a result of the duo's turning over old rocks. Since the identity of the killer is revealed relatively early on, the final sections are short on suspense. (Mar. 27)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationEditorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewDr. Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis are faced with a disturbingly intimate mystery revolving around a woman's cryptic deathbed confession in another Jonathan Kellerman psychological thriller featuring the brilliant SoCal psychologist and his police consultant partner (Gone, Rage, Therapy, et al.).
The tragic death of veteran emergency room nurse Patty Bigelow, who passed away at the age of 54 from pancreatic cancer, brings with it unsettling questions. Hours before her death, Bigelow informed her adopted 18-year old daughter Tanya -- a former patient of Delaware's -- about a "terrible thing" she did years earlier: murder. In an effort to give the troubled young woman closure, Delaware and Sturgis (whose partner, Dr. Rick Silverman, worked closely with Tanya's mother) vow to unravel the mysterious admission. But their investigation leads them headlong into a sinister L.A. subculture populated by thieves, thugs, drug dealers, porn stars, and an unlikely psychopath who makes Hannibal Lecter look like a Boy Scout…
An acclaimed clinical psychologist in his own right (Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, Helping the Fearful Child, et al.), Kellerman draws on his professional expertise in crafting his novels of psychological suspense. And nowhere is the author's understanding of the intricacies of the human mind more evident than in Obsession, a deft thriller that explores a plethora of illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, sociopathy, and the Oedipus complex. Readers will not only be shocked when Bigelow's deep, dark secret is eventually revealed, they'll be absolutely blown away by the ingenious twist at the novel's conclusion. Classic Kellerman. Paul Goat Allen
Publishers Weekly
The 21st Alex Delaware novel (after 2006's Gone) from bestseller Kellerman contains fewer twists than usual for this contemporary thriller series. Once again, Delaware, an accomplished psychologist, teams with his friend Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective, to probe a mystery, though this time there's considerable doubt as to the nature of the puzzle. Teenager Tanya Bigelow, whom Delaware treated as a child for obsessive-compulsive disorder, consults him because her aunt Patty, who raised her, conveyed a cryptic message just before she died, apparently confessing to a crime. Shortly after Delaware and Sturgis start investigating, one of Patty's former neighbors turns up dead, the first in a series of corpses that appear, possibly as a result of the duo's turning over old rocks. Since the identity of the killer is revealed relatively early on, the final sections are short on suspense. (Mar. 27)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information