Rating: 
Summary: Milo is in, Spike and Robin out.
Review: I enjoyed this Delaware story more than most of them, maybe because I'd quit reading them for a while. With Robin and Spike out of the picture, and the added focus on Milo Sturgis' early years as a police officer, The Murder Book offers new insight to this series. The mystery itself is engaging --- a violent unsolved case, one of Milo's first homicide investigations, comes back to haunt the detective via The Murder Book. It all ends with a lot of drama and secrets revealed, just like a great book should.
Rating: 
Summary: Pass on this boring pulp-fiction
Review: This is a barely passable pulp fiction "mystery" novel from Jonathan Kellerman revolving around a sex murder and some questionable rich kids.
In essence, this book is pretty much completely predictable, and burdened by lengthy explanations that, by the time you get to them, you've either guessed or stopped caring about. The book starts off with premise - a young woman is brutally murdered and sexually molested, with no apparent leads, a cold case 20 years old - but it quickly degenerates, and the true perpetrators are apparent from early on.
Even as a light holiday, poolside, read - this book is lacking. There are way too many lucky breaks and coincidences (the main character just happens to be old friends with a key witness' shrink) for this book to even approach plausible. The characters are one dimensional and boring. Even Milo, the gay cop, is just... boring. Cliched. A shabby excuse for a fleshed out character.
Give this book a pass - seriously. I'm sure there are much better books to spend your $6 - $8 on.
Rating:
Summary: Novel has obvious flaws in plot and structure.
Review: The Murder Book is one in a long series featuring Alex Delaware, and only the second I've read, and most likely the last. Kellerman does a good job characterizing Alex and gay friend Milo, but the plot is so full of contrivances and holes that it made this book very dissapointing.
The book opens with Alex receiving a book with pictures of crime scenes in it dating 20 to 40 years old. Alex calls Milo over to look at it and Milo instantly recognizes one of the pictures in there. It is of Janie Ingalls, a case he never solved. Milo then recalls the case and the investigation with his partner Schwinn in flashback style. Milo and Schwinn are pulled off the case just as they gather some clues and Milo has been bothered by it ever since.
Schwinn has a source who says the Ingalls girl may have been at a party thrown by a bunch of rich kids. In the present day, Milo and Alex begin investingating the rich kids the Cossacks and their friends Michael Larner and Vance Coury. It seems like for 200 pages they investigate the rich kids befor the dead Ingalls girl is mentioned again.
The link between the murder of the Ingalls girl and then the long drawn out investigation of the Cossacks and Larners and everything that stems from that is tenious at best. The book kind of glances over this part at the beginning, indicating Schwinn had a source who said there was a wild party at a house owned by the Cossacks. Alex and Milo believe Ingalls and her friend may have attended the party but have no proof or real reason to believe this. My problem is that every step that Alex and Milo take in their investigation is circumstancial, not confirmed by any hard facts.
Milo and Alex do a lot of investigating, but none of their suspicions are ever confirmed by hard evidence. The trail of crime from the Cossacks is so drawn out its hard to remember at times what the original investigation was. Also, there is never really any contact with the bad guys at all in the book. Then, the book ends with the horrible method of long explanation. Milo talks with a man who basically explains everything to him about what really happened. Milo knew some of it through his tedious investigations, but the rest is confirmed in the end.
I haven't read much of this series, so I don't know much about the Bert Harrison character. But it seems to be far fetched that a fatherly figure to Alex could be the psychiatrist to so many main characters in this book. It seems like a cheap plot device to hand Alex the answers he is looking for.
In the end I was very disappointed because Kellerman is obviously a good writer. I just don't know what he was thinking when he threw this plot together.
Rating:
Summary: NICE ADDITION TO A GOOD SERIES
Review: I liked this one. I do agree with a couple of the other reviewers in that this one may have lost some of the zip...do you suppose it might be time to go on to another series??? Anyway, the plot was good, nice twists and turns and the same good character developement was present. I do recommend you read this one, if for not other reason, ya just sort of hate to quit a series once you get into it.
Rating:
Summary: Milo is in, Spike and Robin out.
Review: I enjoyed this Delaware story more than most of them, maybe because I'd quit reading them for a while. With Robin and Spike out of the picture, and the added focus on Milo Sturgis' early years as a police officer, The Murder Book offers new insight to this series. The mystery itself is engaging --- a violent unsolved case, one of Milo's first homicide investigations, comes back to haunt the detective via The Murder Book. It all ends with a lot of drama and secrets revealed, just like a great book should.
Rating:
Summary: Page Turner, TERRIFIC plotted whodoneit
Review: I sat up all night and read this one in a single 'sitting'. Could not put it down. Very well written. I am new to Mr. Kellerman's work, and have also read Cold Heart which I read in two sittings (had work to do -- smile), and am buying more of his work. As good as the Raymond Chandler and P.D. James books for sure. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Defenestrate this book
Review: That's what I did once I had finished it. Unfortunately, I live on the first floor, but wished that I lived on the tenth so that the book (and all of its hollow stereotypically characters) could have the time to contemplate how it had misused my time before it was dashed to pieces. A pack of dingoes to rend it completely, Bradbury's firemen to burn the kerosene soaked pieces and multiple horesemen to carry the remaining ashes to the four corners of the globe would have been an even sweeter revenge. This book stands for everything that readers hate about best sellers and must have been karmic punishment. Rather than read the book, please take several Percoset and five tumblers of Jack Daniels. The synaptic loss will be equivalent and if you never wake up, no big deal. The only reason that I finished it was to see how bad it could get. My reaction is mentioned in the "review" title.
Rating:
Summary: Annother fine Kellerman offering!
Review: This novel delivers in every way! It starts with a hook that makes you simply HAVE to turn the pages. The character development is as always with Mr. Kellerman, superb! As in any series, it is always great to revisit "old friends" in terms of the main characters, and learn new things about them. This book has a great beginning, middle and end...what more can you ask for? I don't give out plot information in my reviews, I only say that this book is definitely a must-have for any Kellerman fan or any suspense novel fan as well. Kudos to Kellerman!
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