Tuesday, 30 January 2024

Deadly Secrets

 

The Ghost Orchid


Jonathan Kellerman

(Century, 2024)

 

The dead bodies of the heir to a business empire and his even richer married neighbour are found by the pool of a property in Bel Air. First impression is that an illicit affair has come to a violent end, but there is no sign of forced entry and the killer left behind no forensic evidence. Just the sort of case that is the stock in trade of homicide detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware.

Jonathan Kellerman has been writing novels featuring Alex Delaware for close to forty years, which is a remarkable achievement. Even more so since each new book is as fresh and enjoyable as the last.

The same is true with The Ghost Orchid, Kellerman takes Sturgis and Delaware into the darker recesses of American life, in town like LA where regular reinvention is almost mandatory some secrets cannot be buried. Not permanently anyway, sooner or later they will float back to the surface, sometimes with deadly consequences.

As ever the psychological insights into what drives people to commit unspeakable acts are scalpel sharp and the setting in a golden state where success and squalor rub shoulders brilliantly realized. In Delaware and Sturgis Jonathan Kellerman has created not just a pair of returning characters with massive readers appeal, he has also given us the picture of an enduring friendship between two men with minds supremely attuned to their chosen profession.

The Alex Delaware novels have been bestsellers for decades, as Kellerman and his two most enduring characters move into their fifth decade, they are well on the way to becoming classics of the genre too.

 

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment