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Dr. Death

Dr. Death

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $26.37
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: As if written by an underpaid ghost writer
Review: The writing style of this book is so much poorer than the previous books in this series, that I have to wonder if either (a) someone else wrote it, or (b) the author has a new editor.

All the characters sound exactly the same - you can't tell when Milo is speaking, vs. when it's Alex. And neither of them sounds realistic. There are many short sentences and sentence fragments, as if someone were trying to imitate Hemingway.

Near the beginning, Milo and Alex are at the crime scene, and we read Milo saying,

"Forgive the peckishness. I need sleep." Yet another glance at the Timex.

Huh? Peckishness? This doesn't sound like Milo at ALL.

The ending is unrealistic as well, the villain someone unexpected, for a ridiculous reason. And Alex doesn't turn them in, either.

In between the beginning and the end, we have occasional cursory sex scenes, badly written, between Alex and Robin. Robin, too, sounds just like Alex and Milo. And the sex bits are not consistent with anything in the previous books.

I suspect the book will sell well anyway, because people automatically buy things by an author they like, but it will be a disappointment. I will hesitate before buying the next one, if Kellerman has truly gone downhill like this.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Satisfying formula, but still a formula
Review: Dr. Eldon Mate, a grandstanding doctor who specializes in putting down terminally ill patients, is viciously murdered in what seems like a case of turnabout being fair play. Alex Delaware realizes that he's uncomfortably close to the case due to a patient from his past and has to grapple with client/confidentiality issues in order to help Milo solve the murder.

One of the best things about the early Alex Delaware novels was the spark that they seemed to have-- a spark that's been lost in the formula for the last two books. An attempt to spice it up by introducing friction between Milo and Alex isn't enough to make this more than a decent quick read.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A series on the wane
Review: For the past few Delaware books, the structure has been tediously similar: Alex (with or without Milo) goes from person to person and asks questions. Eventually, he figures out who the killer is, there is a single action scene and then it ends.

Alex is getting to be less and less of a character. His girlfriend serves almost no purpose to the story, not even as a sounding board. In this story, even the concluding action scene is pretty minor, and in the only other scene of any real violence, Alex is threatened with no more than a sore jaw.

Billy Straight shows that Kellerman still knows what he's doing, but the Delaware books seem to just go through the motions. It's time for either rebirth or retirement for this series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Who Sent Dr. Mate On His Ultimate "Journey"
Review: A doctor devoted to death...Dr. Eldon Mate known as Dr. Death in the Los Angeles area....is he a helpful soul filled with compassion when he assists terminally ill "travelers" on to their final destination or is he a serial killer himself? This is one of the questions that surfaces when Dr. Mate himself is brutally murdered in a van attached to the Humanitron" machine that he used to send his patients on their way.

Milo Sturgis gets the case and when he calls Alex Delaware in to consult, Alex is concerned that he may have a patient conflict of interest. One of his patients was the daughter of a woman that Dr. Mate had supposedly helped to her death. The husband and father of the patient, an overbearing control freak looks like a prime suspect. But then so do several other people along the book's way. The plot is well developed and intriguing and the suspense keeps going to the final pages when the event that triggered so much of the conflict between all the involved characters is revealed with a real surprise twist. Kellerman's Delaware series continues to be one to watch for.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Once again, just not bad.
Review: Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis are back... and the results are entertaining but forgettable. This is a good listen; well-performed, and holds your interest. But for those of us who've read a lot of Kellerman, he's become master of the three-sentence-fragments-followed-by-a-rhetorical-question gimmick. Like this:

Scripted plot. Increasingly flat characters. Stagnant formula. Time to get out of a rut?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Back from the Dead
Review: After the last installment, "Monster", this series was near death. But Kellerman has returned to basics and found an interesting family that keeps us hooked to his story. Secondary characters are strong, and at least one could have told a fascinating version from his own point of view. A good read.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't pad Kellerman's wallet...
Review: ...by buying this book! Kellerman's not my style to begin with, but he's done much better. Like James "Book-A-Week" Patterson, Kellerman has plied out a shamefully ill-written novel to cash in on his name. To keep it simple, you have about 30 pages of actual "Dr. Death", 200+ pages of pointless swerve material with un-interesting characters with little revelance to the ending(other than for Kellerman to flex his rather bland and suspect "psych profiling" style), and 30 end pages with a blink and you missed it wrap-up and tawdry "hot button" ending. Beyond the pale, Kellerman also chooses to plug a former work ("Billy Jack") in several scenes that add NOTHING to the story. Sticking a blatant commercial in a book is pretty low from such a "big name" author. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this, send a message to Jonathan Kellerman that his fans want quality in his works, not quantity.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Alex and Milo solve another one
Review: I agree with the reader from Seattle. Mr. Kellerman has a lot to learn about fat people. The wife/mother who gains a lot of weight to punish herself is described as grotesque, yet she only weighs around 200 pounds. One character even suggests that she would need help to leave her bedroom!!! Really!!!! A person, depending on their height, would have to reach 400 or 500 pounds, maybe more, before becoming immobile. Lots of people in the 200 to 300 pound range get around just fine and lead normal, active lives. Mr. Kellerman should do a little more research on obesity before writing about it again.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not one of Kellerman's best
Review: This is not one of Kellerman's best books, but I was not disappointed to read it. I have to read all Kellerman's books!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not up to snuff - and fat phobic
Review: I usually really like Jonathan Kellerman's books, but the psychological understanding in this book was limited at best. Although it's a current topic ("assisted suicide"), the author really didn't add much to the topic. I also found very offensive the presentation of one of the characters who had, as Kellerman described it, gone to bed and eaten until she had almost doubled her weight. She was presented in a very unsympathetic view - almost as if she was a criminal, and most of the other characters seemed to be horrified by how fat she had gotten, as if being fat were a mortal sin. I'd expect a little more psychological understanding from Kellerman. I found that the book left a bad taste in my mouth (or in my mind).


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