Rating: Summary: Disappointing Review: Dr. Death by Johathan Kellerman was a tremendous disappointment for me. It is the last Kellelrman I will read and I am just thankful I did not purchase the book. I am really tired of his distortion of Los Angeles...some of the simpler folks that read his books might take the info as fact when it is not. I think he should be ashamed of himsefl, but he sells so I guess thats not a possibility, too bad. I am downtown most every weekend enjoying the music center, the new Cathedral, extending out to the beaches and the valleys.
Rating: Summary: Entertaining, solid, but not too surprising Review: Dr. Death helps terminally ill people to "travel" to the afterlife. He has done so for more than 60 people before he falls into the hands of a brutal killer. It is up to Milo and Alex Delaware to solve the case. This is all the more difficult because Alex is treating a child of one of Dr. Death's clients and thus has to keep up his client's confidentiality as well. After a lot of false leads they finally succeed in tracing the killer.This is another entertaining, solid Kellerman, but it is not as good and surprising as some of his previous novels. This is mainly due to the number of sub-plots that are present in the book and do not add a lot to the main story.
Rating: Summary: Dr. Delaware is on the Trail of Dr. Death's Killer Review: Dr. Eldon Mate is the angel of mercy in Los Angeles, or was, because he's found dead in the back of the van, where he had assisted in the suicides of so many, hooked up to his own "Humanitron machine." And just so the police don't think he took his own life, the killer mutilated the body. Once again Detective Milo Sturges enlists the aid of his old friend Dr. Alex Delaware to consult on a murder case and once again the pair become embroiled in a search for a killer. First off, they ask themselves, who might have had it in for the death doc? Perhaps family members of those he'd assisted into the great beyond. Perhaps the son he'd abandoned as a small child. And to make matters more interesting, Alex is counseling Stacy and Eric Doss, the children of Joanne Doss, one of the death doctor's assisted suicides. Alex is a child psychologist, after all. Will this potential conflict of interest come between Alex and Milo? And did Doctor Death really do in Joanne, or had she been done by her hubby in a copycat killing? As usual Kellerman had me glued to his words as I eagerly read on, dying to see what the next page had in store for me in this intriguing book that kept the suspense high right up until the surprise twist at the end.
Rating: Summary: NOT HIS BEST! Review: Dr. Eldon Mate, better known as Dr. Death, helps with the aid of killing terminally ill people, but when he is found butchered in his DEATH van, Milo Sturgis and Alex Delaware are called onto the case to find out who killed the killer. As Delaware and Sturgis begin looking into the dark corners of the late Dr. Death's life they find any number of suspects...from relatives of those he killed, to his own family members. "Dr. Death" is a disappointment from this bestselling author; the novel has too many characters, and drags on SLOWLY in too many spots. Fans of the previous novels in this series will be bored with this new book. Jonathan Kellerman has been the leading practioner of the pyschological thriller, but with his last few novels he is losing steam...his novels are no longer the page-turners they once were, instead they are slowly paced character studies with some suspense thrown in. Nick Gonnella
Rating: Summary: A good thing gone sour Review: Eldon Mate, the Dr. Death who sends weary travelers on their way out of life with the help of a few injections, is found trussed up and dead in the back of his own euthanasia van. It's up to psychologist Alex Delaware and his buddy, LAPD gay cop Milo, to find out who took it upon themselves to put Dr. Death out of his pain. While I try to be a moderately enthusiastic fan of the Alex Delaware series, DR. DEATH did nothing to encourage me. The prose was dry, the plot lagging, the characters forced. Kellerman seemed to feel the need to have Alex come up with a million possible scenerios for who could have done the killing, then go about disproving them all. Alex and Milo end up working at cross purposes part of the time (frankly, any time Milo is pulled from this series it suffers greatly), and Robin (Alex's longtime girlfriend) failed to make up for the lack. Yes, there is an interesting subplot that serves to nicely complicate things and I did enjoy the parts where Alex conducts actual sessions with patients (although I can't quite figure out what he accomplishes), but there are far too many detailed descriptions of Los Angeles locale and far too many of Alex's diced thoughts for me to truly enjoy this book. Which brings me to my last point: I've read this book twice, once in book form, once on tape. Normally I enjoy stories much more on tape, but in this case John Rubinstein's narration only serves to make the plot even slower and Alex's thought processes even more annoying. I can understand the difficulty of maintaining a series like this -- fans want a certain thing, but if you give it to them over and over they complain of boredom. Still, I can't help hoping that the sort of boredom inspired by DR. DEATH is not so much a result of continuing a series as of failing to live up to it. All of us fans will inevitably read this book -- we're fans, after all. But I'd rather reread OVER THE EDGE any day.
Rating: Summary: My introduction to this author Review: Having had Jonathan Kellerman recommended highly to me, I gave him a try with this book. Without reviewing the plot, I'll admit it moves quickly, despite extraneous information on virtually every page. I could have done without Dr. Delaware's sexual unions with his wife, for example, and without his detailed word maps of Los Angeles streets. These are minor flaws. The major flaw is that there is not one single character here that a reader can like or find entertaining. The victim, the cops, Dr. Delaware himself, the young woman Dr. Delaware is counseling, her nasty brother, her nasty father, etc. The novel left a rather bitter aftertaste, as if I had eaten something that was on the verge of being spoiled and vaguely poisonous. Would I read another by Kellerman? Perhaps--just to see if this is the norm or if Dr. Mate's death (see matar in a Spanish dictionary) brought out the worst in people.
Rating: Summary: Had to finally close the book Review: I have read every book Jonathan Kellerman has written. This is the only book of his that I finally gave up on. Kept waiting for it to grab me. Didn't happen, but he will continue to be my favorite author.
Rating: Summary: Not Kellerman's Best Work Review: It's embarrassing to admit, but I had never read a Kellerman novel before, either Kaye OR Jonathan. So I had very little expectation level when a friend at work begged me to read this book. I found it well-written, fun to read, riveting, and intelligent--albeit a tad confusing (I kept having to look back to make sure the suspects were who I remembered they were). I read it in a couple of days, and came away intent on reading the next in Kellerman's Alex Delaware series. Therefore, I was very surprised to see that this offering only earned an overall three-star rating from other reviewers. Yes, it's fast-paced, and therefore, the relationships Alex has with his wife Robin and even his friend Milo seem superficial, but that did not bother me overmuch. Some of the characters were fairly improbable, but these days, all I have to do is turn on Court TV to see the same types. Having read so many, many books in this genre, some of them real stinkers, I think that's a low rating. But, as admitted above, I have not read any OTHER Kellermans, so compared with himself, he may not have done his best work here. I'll know when I read more of his work--and I definitely want to read more.
Rating: Summary: The Further Adventures of Alex the Android Review: Jonathan Kellerman has struck gold again. Dr. Alex Deleware is back to assist detective Milo Sturgis. The relationship between Deleware and Sturgis is just as interesting as the story itself-comfortable and weary at the same time. The two are a little more at odds than usual in the murder investigation of a doctor who assists his patients in suicide. There are a large number of suspects in the tale. What makes this book most interesting are the two ethical questions raised; 1. Assisted suicide, and 2. Doctor/patient confidentiality. Kellerman does a very good job of presenting the issues in a balanced way, seeming to take neither side of each issue. This book was absorbing, keeping me awake until long past my normal bed time. Don't let this Kellerman thriller pass you by.
Rating: Summary: Kellerman Scores Again! Review: Once again, I must profess my hatred for Jonathan Kellerman--his books are impossible to stop reading once you start! Kellerman's longtime protagonist, Dr. Alex Delaware (who of course I believe is a fictional version of the author himself) is once again assisting his good friend, Milo Sturgis, in a grisly murder investigation, providing valuable psychological insight and, of course, his own unauthorized investigating help. This time, though, there's a twist--one of the suspects in the murder is the father of one of Delaware's patients, a young girl whose mother's death was "assisted" by the murder victim. Alex struggles to reconcile his friendship with Milo and his need for confidentiality for his patients, all the while working his way through a tangled plot. The novel contains all the usual elements of a Kellerman novel--a widely diverse cast of characters, a few surprising plot twists, and, of course, an ending that catches the reader completely by surprise (this reader, anyway). After 15 books, some may call this the same old formula, but my opinion is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it! NOTE: Maybe the most interesting character in the entire book is someone we never meet--Dr. Eldon Mate, the murder victim. His character is developed entirely postmortem, through interviews with relatives, friends, and associates, and through fictional newspaper and journal articles. I think the main purpose of Mate's character was to allow Kellerman to present debate on the topic of assisted suicide. To his credit, Kellerman presents both sides of the debate equally, to the point where I'm not really sure where Kellerman stands on the subject (which may be the point).
|