BOOK REVIEW: Rage

Rage by Jonathan Kellerman

In a host of consecutive bestsellers, Jonathan Kellerman has kept readers spellbound with the intense, psychologically acute adventures of Dr. Alex Delaware-and with excursions through the raw underside of L.A. and the coldest alleys of the criminal mind. Rage offers a powerful new case in point, as Delaware and LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis revisit a horrifying crime from the past that has taken on shocking and deadly new dimensions.

Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age twenty-one, he’s emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need: to talk-once again-with psychologist Alex Delaware. But the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation never takes place.

Has karma caught up with Rand? Or has someone waited for eight patient years to dine on ice-cold revenge? Both seem strong possibilities to Sturgis, but Delaware’s suspicions run deeper . . . and darker. Because fear in the voice of the grownup Rand Duchay-and his eerie final words to Alex: “I’m not a bad person”-betray untold secrets. Buried revelations so horrendous, and so damning, they’re worth killing for.

As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake-and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight.

Rage finds Jonathan Kellerman in phenomenal form-orchestrating a relentlessly suspenseful, devilishly unpredictable plot to a finale as stunning and thought-provoking as it is satisfying.

I have been reading Jonathan Kellerman for a long time and I’m a huge fan of his books. This however was the first time I’d picked one up in about 2 years. Now without being too cliched and corny it was so comfortable to slip back into it was like I’d never been away! Now when I say comfortable I don’t necessarily mean an easy ride. The book opens with a horrific murder which unfortunately has parallels with a horrendous incident that happened in England about 15 years ago, it was very emotional to read. It has you hooked though and you just know from reading the first chapter you need to follow through with the book. Alex Delaware is, IMO, one of the best characters created. ( Film casting people if you’re reading this….Patrick Wilson!!! )The writing and descriptions in the book are fantastic and the twists genuinely surprising.

Highly Recommended

 

BOOK REVIEW: The Sleeping Doll

The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaver

   Jeffery Deaver is back with a dark and multilayered psychological thriller about a vicious killer’s escape from a California super-prison and the mysterious and deadly quest he embarks on once he’s free.
     Making her first appearance in The Cold Moon (2006), special agent Kathryn Dance—a brilliant interrogator and body language expert—stars in The Sleeping Doll, where she and her partners at the California Bureau of Investigation hunt down escaped killer Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson.
     Deaver’s most frightening villain to date, Pell is a master of control, who mesmerizes, seduces, and exploits people for his own murderous ends. To track down Pell before he destroys more lives, Kathryn Dance must enlist the help of people from the killer’s past: the three women who lived under his sadistic sway in the cult he once headed, as well as the young girl known as The Sleeping Doll, the only survivor of her family’s slaughter at Pell’s hand.
     Filled with masterful plot twists: Jeffery Deaver creates plots with so many twists and turns they could “hide behind a spiral staircase” (People), and The Sleeping Doll has Deaver’s trademark twists in spades. It is guaranteed to keep readers guessing right up to the breathless end.

So I’m a huge fan of Jeffery Deaver. Ever since reading ‘The Bone Collector’. His Lincoln Rhyme series is fantastic but I’ve always been less of a fan of the stand alone novels. Kathryn Dance was introduced in the last Rhyme novel ‘The Cold Moon’ and here she gets her own story. All the hallmarks of a Deaver novel are here – a complex villain, action scenes and of course the twists. Yes, the master of the twists gets us every time – and this was no exception.

However, there was something lacking here. Dance, whilst being an interesting enough protaginst is nowhere near as genius a creation as Rhyme. The book was also lacking in supporting characters – for example not a Thom, Amelia or Lon in site and at times it felt rather soapy – far too much time in my opinion was spent on the drama of Dances’ personal life. Also, for the title of the book there was a surprising lack of the ‘Sleeping Doll’ – a character I would have liked to have seen far more of.

Despite all this, an under-par Deaver is still better than some of the dross that gets turned out these days. There’s also the first few chapters of his next novel ‘The Broken Window’ to whet your appetite and it looks like its going to be an absolute stunner!