Rating: 
Summary: Solid mystery
Review: Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis investigate the murder of a young couple, which soon engulfs them in an increasingly complex mystery.
Jonathan Kellerman is great at creating complicated, well-developed plots and shows no signs here of losing his touch. I also quite liked the supporting characters, especially the Quick family.
My only real problem with Kellerman is his over-reliance on description. I don't really need to know what the bookshelves of some minor character looks like. His descriptions can sometimes run as long as an entire page, and I just wind up skimming.
Otherwise, another highly satisfying book from one of crime's best writers.
Rating: 
Summary: Kellerman's Latest Alex Delaware Thriller Same Old, Same Old
Review: Alex Delaware should sell stock in Google.
It seems like in the last few book, most of his investigative break through have come from running some poor schmuck's name through the Internet search engine to find out about the most intimate details of a person life. In one funny turn of events he actually says he needs to do some old fashion leg work, so what does he do. He turns to an old friend who is an expert at discovering government funding. How does she do it? By searching computer databases.
Therapy is the latest yarn by Jonathan Kellerman. Once again he returns to his safe ground. A first person dominated tale from the perspective of Dr. Alex Delaware, a California Psychologist. This time, Dr. Delaware is helping his friend, Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, investigate the brutal slaying of two young lovers found parked in a convertible. One of these young lovers was the recent victim of a traumatic brain injury and was seeing a celebrity shrink.
As the investigation moves on, it is discovered that this isn't the first patient of this celebrity shrink to be murdered using this M.O. Eventually, the psychologist herself is murdered. What follows is a complex tale involving strippers, the Rwandan Tutsi genocide, Medicare fraud, prison reform, secret government officials and real estate deals. The Plot becomes so complex that it guarantees a bit of an anti-climatic ending.
For the most part, the book is fast paced and fun to read. Unfortunately, Kellerman's choice to write solely in the first person again prevents a lot of character development. His previous Delaware novel included third person accounts from Sturgis and his female LA Detective Petra, and these changes of pace in the story telling really rounded out the story. Here we are back to the ho-hum goody two shoes word of Alex Delaware.
Kellerman is a gifted story teller, but boxes himself in too much in this tale. In a plot as intricate as this, with a lot of dirty players in dirty places, confining us to Dr. Delaware's nice house doing computer searches takes some away from the story.
Rating: 
Summary: A riveting plot and adventure
Review: Another Alex Delaware novel comes to life under Kellerman's skilled hand, churning out a riveting plot and adventure based on a young couple's murder in the Los Angeles hills. The savage murder and missing identity of the young woman involved lands the case in Alex Delaware's lap, involving him in a series of clues which brings him in conflict with a popular celebrity psychologist's Therapy cases.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad, but true
Review: I have a special fondness for Alex Delaware and his plights. I'm completely addicted to this series, I have to admit. But I was so disappointed in this book. It seemed to me that the author got bored with his own characters and plot line. And the exposition-- come on! In any case, I appreciate anyone's writing and the work that goes into a project like this. But, I've come to expect more from Mr. Kellerman, and I hope to be able to justify my addiction with his next book.
Rating:
Summary: TIME FOR A SECOND OPINION?
Review: I have enjoyed the Alex Delaware series very much, but THERAPY doesn't come anywhere near the rest of the books. Kellerman weaves a plot so intricate and mundane that it's easy to lose focus on what is going on. For example, his relationship with Milo seems tired and nothing new is revealed; also his love interest in this one, Allyson, is nowhere near as involving as his up and down relationship with Robin, who is only briefly used in this novel.
Kellerman gives us no one to really care about, and there are no surprises in the whodunit arena. Kellerman is falling into his wife's dilemma by starting to inject the Jewish plight into his novels; leave that to Faye; you don't need it. There are too many characters involved in too many circuitous ways to allow the reader to experience any kind of empathy or concern.
All in all, Jonathan, THERAPY is just dull and doesn't do justice to the excellent novels you wrote before this.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I love Jonathan Kellerman's stories about Alex Delaware and his friend Milo Sturgis, but this one, like Mr. Kellerman's last book "Conspiracy Club," was not up to par.The plot got bogged down in the intricacies of government funding and Medi-Cal billing. The average citizen dislikes dealing with insurance in real life, so why would they want to read about it in their spare time? Too many characters contributed to this problem. I found it hard to care about Gavin Quick, and it was even harder to figure out whether he was a bad guy or a good guy. Ditto for his father, aunt, and ex-girlfriend. And why the long ramble about the girl who was found in the car with him? Background is one thing, Mr. Kellerman, but superfluous writing is quite another. Go back to psychology and murder, and leave the California insurance business alone, Mr. Kellerman. Your books are much more enjoyable that way.
Rating:
Summary: Psychologist, heal thyself.
Review: In Jonathan Kellerman's latest thriller, "Therapy," Los Angeles psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide detective Milo Sturgis investigate the brutal murder of a young man and his girlfriend. The two victims, Gavin Quick and the unidentified woman who was found with him, were parked in a lonely area outside of Los Angeles when they were both shot in the head. Delaware, who consults for the Los Angeles Police Department, lends his psychological expertise to the investigation. Sturgis and Delaware learn that Gavin had been seeing a popular therapist named Dr. Mary Lou Koppel, an egotistical publicity hound who is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows. Milo and Alex are startled to learn that one of Koppel's former female patients had also been brutally murdered. Can the murders of Gavin Quick and this female patient somehow be related? "Therapy" is a talky novel in which Sturgis and Delaware spend most of their time interviewing dozens of people, sometimes more than once. In between interviews, they frequent various restaurants and bars while they mull over the particulars of the case. Slowly, Alex and Milo begin to shed some light on this complicated mystery. The plot of "Therapy" is engrossing and the characters are lively enough. One aspect of the book that I found interesting is that the author, himself a respected clinical psychologist, depicts three psychologists in "Therapy" who have bad judgment and questionable ethics. Although the book would have been even stronger with tighter editing, "Therapy" is still an entertaining thriller with some original twists and turns.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven Delaware story -- almost too complex a plot
Review: Kellerman fans (the people that really know all his books), as opposed to the "professional" reviewers, will find this latest psychologist Alex Delaware novel, as usual featuring co-star gay detective Milo Sturgis, somewhat puzzling. If we didn't know Alex and Milo well, we might well find their characters enigmatic, with inconsistent action and a pursuit of the clues that borders on hobbyist. When a young couple is found murdered, with an unnecessary impalement of the female victim, Milo and Doc Delaware pick up the case almost on a whim since they were nearby. [Apparently Sturgis can partner with Alex almost at will -- how his presumably high bills get paid is conveniently never addressed...] While the male is quickly ID'd, it takes much of the book to discover who the female is, generating much of what true suspense there was. The rest of the plot gets embroiled with a loosely knit firm of three psychologists specializing in private patient therapy (hence the title) who, as the plot unfolds, seem to be involved in a highly shady billing scheme involving ex-cons as both patients and, well, patient pimps. Before it's over, one of the three gets offed, the murdered boy's father disappears, and the storyline twists and turns in the wind. The ending is unusually inconclusive, with our stars making some very interesting value judgments about which bad guys to pursue and which not, an outcome we perceived as ridiculously unrealistic. Kellerman has always been a good story teller, but it seems his quality varies more widely as his quantity increases. Delaware's love life, frequently a tiresome thing with "ex" Robin, is a little more normal with new lover Allison, but their shop talk gets to be a bit much. A token cameo by Robin and her dog was just silly filler, and the scenes with Delaware playing "good cop / bad cop" with Sturgis went down poorly. We were more than tired of the multiple bad guys, and by the end barely cared who did what. This strikes us as a book that needed to be edited better -- improve the professionalism of the principles; shorten the billing fraud thing which should be contained to the sub-plot that it is (we can figure out ourselves it provides motive); and humanize the dead boy's family by opening up the true facts sooner; and we might have something here. As it is, it's a lukewarm entry in the series.
Rating:
Summary: So-so
Review: Kellerman's latest, Therapy is a so-so read. I guess after awhile of reading the same repetitive plots using different characters, it can become tiresome to a reader. If you'd like to read a different type novel that's compelling, riveting, eye-opening drama, read LUST OF THE FLESH by Beverly Rolyat. It's about a corrupted district attorney who finds himself caught up in a web of deceipt, destruction, lies, lust, betrayal, murder, mystery, suspense, romance and sex galore! Is he really the biological father of his ex-wife's promiscuous daughter's infant son? Or has he been set up? LOTF is an enlightening read through and through. Happy reading.
Rating:
Summary: Similar To Hansen's book?
Review: The writer Matthew Hansen has a book here called "Therapy" too, a fiction novel. Are they based on each other?
|
