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Monster (Alex Delaware #13)
A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense—they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked be...more
Mass Market Paperback, 393 pages
Published
April 1st 2003
by Ballantine Books
(first published 1999)
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This is my first Jonathan Kellerman book. He has been on my TBR list for some time but I was slow to get to him because I am reading so many other series. I am in the midst of Andrew Vachss, Sara Paretsky, Loren Estleman, Michael Connolly, Scott Turow, Karin Slaughter, George Pelecanos and probably a few more that I am not remembering right now.
Monster is the thirteenth book in the twenty-eight book Alex Delaware series that began in 1981 and is still ongoing. I am starting in the middle with th...more
Monster is the thirteenth book in the twenty-eight book Alex Delaware series that began in 1981 and is still ongoing. I am starting in the middle with th...more
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Ok...a female psychologist in her thirties tires of her career in academia and chooses to work in a forensic institution east of Los Angeles. About six months into her job she turns up dead. Seriously, this is the plot. I kid you not. Meanwhile I'm still reading and working.
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Oct 20, 2012
aPriL MEOWS often with scratching
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Shelves:
mysteries-suspense-thrillers
Some decades ago there were all kinds of places for the mentally ill. Tons of hospitals - all rated with various degrees of lockup severity, like prisons. Some were like expensive vacation spas, others were grim horrors where involuntary patients were chained and tormented much as criminals were in 19th century prisons. For some reason, things began to become more humane in the 1960's, newspapers printed exposes of what was occurring in the worst hospitals for the mentally ll, and free or low-co...more
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I found this book to be a creative individual story; however, I also thought that it was drug out longer than it needed to be. Jonathan Kellerman keeps his reader involved throughout the first half of the story, but in the second half I felt like he was filling pages and not making very much progress in the story line. I thought that he was repeating a lot, and spending too much time explaining how the characters felt about something and not enough with what actually was happening.
Even though I...more
Even though I...more
Monster is the third Kellerman novel I've read and with every book read,I like his writing even more. I picked up this book at a bargain at a second hand store as i don't normally buy my copies of thrillers and borrow them from libraries.Faintly reminiscent of The silence of the lambs and more of ,Hannibal Lecter, I found the book spine chilling and gripping.The pace is not really high-adrenaline inducing,but Alex Delaware and his LAPD buddy Milo chip away industriously at uncertainty to make se...more
Le corps d'un apprenti acteur de 25 ans est retrouvé coupé en deux dans le coffre de sa voiture. Deux mois plus tard, la malheureuse psychologue Claire Argent est retrouvée morte elle aussi, en un seul morceau cette fois, mais les yeux détruits.
"Pas arrachés, hachés menus", précise l'inspecteur Milo Sturgis à son ami Alex Delaware. Si Milo ne trouve aucune piste pour le meurtre du jeune comédien, Claire Argent, quant à elle, offre un profil intéressant : elle travaillait au Starkweather Hospita...more
"Pas arrachés, hachés menus", précise l'inspecteur Milo Sturgis à son ami Alex Delaware. Si Milo ne trouve aucune piste pour le meurtre du jeune comédien, Claire Argent, quant à elle, offre un profil intéressant : elle travaillait au Starkweather Hospita...more
Always a fan of Mr. Kellerman, Monster does not disappoint. I found this to be an intricately woven mystery with plenty of new and colorful characters to enrich the tantalizing plot; but not so many that a separate spreadsheet would be necessary to keep up. This story features the sweet and smart Alex Delaware and his pal, the mighty Milo. The story allows the reader to "solve" the mystery along with the characters, meaning the story-line stuck in my head like an annoying jingle. I HAD to know i...more
This was my first Kellerman book. Pretty much a standard crime novel written from the perspective of a psychologist. Kellerman sells a lot of books and I guess I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also, there seems to be a closet Kellerman fan here at work and all of his newer paperbacks keep showing up on the book shelf. I'm sure I will read more from Kellerman, but I won't go running out and buying everything I can get my hands on. If I see another one on the shelf, I'm sure I'll pick...more
The titular “Monster” of the title, as with all of Kellerman’s books, isn’t who you think it is. A nearly mute, severely mentally disabled man is serving a life sentence in a prisonlike home for slaughtering a family a decade ago; however, he now murmurs clues about deaths occurring while he’s incarcerated, which provides the book’s twisty plot. Add to this the usual colorful denizens of Los Angeles including a murdered psychologist using him for her pet project and a land development deal that...more
Really good. in fact one of my favourites so far.
It kept me guessing and I really liked the characterizations.The story is gripping due to the difficulty in understanding how and why everything is happening.
Involving the death of an actor as well as a psychiatrist who apparently had no connection, the trail leads back to a historical slaughter and to a maximum security asylum.
I read it out of order, so cringe when I read the relations between Alex and Robin, but like the suspense of this twisted...more
It kept me guessing and I really liked the characterizations.The story is gripping due to the difficulty in understanding how and why everything is happening.
Involving the death of an actor as well as a psychiatrist who apparently had no connection, the trail leads back to a historical slaughter and to a maximum security asylum.
I read it out of order, so cringe when I read the relations between Alex and Robin, but like the suspense of this twisted...more
I have read many Alex Delaware novels, and I would put this one slightly above the middle of the pack. A young actor and psychologist is murdered, and an apparent out-of-sorts fugitive who murdered several people years ago is to blame, although he is spending life in a psych ward. The ward has many questionable characters, both staff and patient. Kellerman portrays this as a unpleasant place and it is. Alex and Milo go through the many clues and characters (standard Kellerman fare), find the per...more
Jonathan Kellerman’s Monster is particularly gruesome! When Dr Alex Delaware and his friend Detective Milo Sturgis are summoned to the institution for the criminally insane, 'Starkweather', they weren’t sure what to expect. After Milo was relieved of his weapons, and Alex his Swiss Army knife, they both felt pretty vulnerable. But the particularly grisly death of Claire Argent, who had worked at 'Starkweather' for a period of approximately 5 months as a psychologist, and the death of Richard Dad...more
I was searching for a new author to love, having read all Linda Fairstein and John Lescroart. This book was a winner with me! Maybe more language than necessary, but great imagery and suspense (I was even questioning whether I should be reading this at bedtime!), and what a twist at the end! I'm a fan of protagonist-series books, where I can pick up the next book by the same author and continue with the same character(s), and Kellerman writes in this style (this is #13 in the Dr. Alex Delaware s...more
Jun 30, 2008
Whitenoisemaker
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime,
stuff-i-d-not-normally-read
A great opening. As I started to read the loony-bin pyrotechnical start of Kellerman's book, I got rather excited. OK so within the first three pages not above the standard 'I'm a genre writer so I'm gonna shove in a few literary references to prove I'm no hack' routine, but the book starts with some interesting and genuinely tense wanderings around a mental asylum.
Things go a little downhill from there, sad to say. For a character who has lasted for over ten books, Kellerman's psychological det...more
Things go a little downhill from there, sad to say. For a character who has lasted for over ten books, Kellerman's psychological det...more
I liked the writing and the development of the story, who the bad guy turned out to be, how they figured out who it was, etc.
I like the thrills and twists, but they were spaced a bit too far apart with stuff that wasn't all that interesting...like Delaware's relationship with his wife, Robin. Usually when you include the MC's romantic interest to this degree, they get tangled up in the plot, or targeted by the killer (see John Sandford's Winter Prey). No such luck here.
I like the thrills and twists, but they were spaced a bit too far apart with stuff that wasn't all that interesting...like Delaware's relationship with his wife, Robin. Usually when you include the MC's romantic interest to this degree, they get tangled up in the plot, or targeted by the killer (see John Sandford's Winter Prey). No such luck here.
This book was just ok. It was an interesting plot, but I kind of felt like somebody who had a great romantic idea of being a homicide detective, but then took the job and found out it really was all paperwork. The majority of the book was really doing the investigative legwork - not really something that keeps you on the edge of your seat. However, he had an interesting way of linking all the characters together in the end and the last 50-75 pages were good and had me a little more engaged. Prob...more
Classic Kellerman. Dr. Alex Delaware and friend Detective Milo Sturgis are working on two seemingly related murders, and the most promising lead seems to be an enigmatic muttering from an almost totally dysfunctional psychotic who seems to have known of the murder before it occurred.
Fast paced, suspenseful, with a complex but logical plot; very satisfying. Fans might be amused to note the cameo appearance of characters from Faye Kellerman's series.
Fast paced, suspenseful, with a complex but logical plot; very satisfying. Fans might be amused to note the cameo appearance of characters from Faye Kellerman's series.
Gelezen in de Nederlandse vertaling "Boze Tongen".
De psychiatrisch patiënt Ardis Peake zit al jaren achter slot en grendel. Nooit heeft iemand aandacht besteed aan zijn gebrabbel en onsamenhangende uitspraken. Maar nu willen sommige wel luisteren, want hoe kan Ardis de gewelddadige dood van een aantal mensen in de buitenwereld voorspellen? Dat is de vraag die psycholoog Alex Delaware en rechercheur Milo Sturgis bezighoudt.
De psychiatrisch patiënt Ardis Peake zit al jaren achter slot en grendel. Nooit heeft iemand aandacht besteed aan zijn gebrabbel en onsamenhangende uitspraken. Maar nu willen sommige wel luisteren, want hoe kan Ardis de gewelddadige dood van een aantal mensen in de buitenwereld voorspellen? Dat is de vraag die psycholoog Alex Delaware en rechercheur Milo Sturgis bezighoudt.
This was the first Jonathan Kellerman book I read and I found it fascinating. This author doesn't have fast-paced action in his books like a lot of other murder mysteries, but instead delves into the psychology of it all. One clue can lead to the next to the next and so on until everything seems to be intertwined, but he does it in an interesting way. This was definitely a good read.
A psychiatrist who works at a state hospital for the criminally insane takes under her wing a patient who, sixteen years ago, brutally murdered a family with whom he was staying. Then the psychiatrist is murdered by someone using the same MO as the institutionalized murderer. Only she was murdered outside the institution, and the murderer was in the institution, plus years of drug therapy has rendered him unable to function. Consulting psychologist Alex Delaware is called upon to resolve this ca...more
Apr 17, 2010
J. Ewbank
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
a-good-read,
mystery-thriller-suspense
Jonathan Kellerman has created an excellent series in the Alex Delaware series. The characters seem very real to you and you enjoy them and want to know more about them and what happens to them. The plot or story line in this book is very good.
A good read for mysery readers.
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"
A good read for mysery readers.
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"
This book was on our company's "traveling books" shelves (donated books that anyone can take) and I grabbed it for a flight. It's somewhat gruesome, predictable and there were loose ends left hanging. I liken it to eating a Hershey's Kiss, it only satisfies a chocolate craving if there's nothing better around.
I like the way Kellerman writes a novel. He gets to the point by using enough words to describe something or a feeling. I didn't feel like I had to waste my time reading a lot of "flowery" words. As to the story line, I began to figure out some points halfway through, but was still surprised towards the end.
This just didn't settle well with me. Having a ten month old daughter myself the scene describing the Monster's atrocities got to me more than normal. Maybe I've reached a point in life where I just can't get into slasher type novels, even if they do have a psychological undertone. But even if that scene hadn't gotten to me it's a pretty crappily written book. Not sure there's much at all that was good about it now that I'm trying to think of something. Oh well...gave it a shot.
Once again, Jonathan Kellerman brings his insights as a psychologist to a murder mystery. Once again, he shows that people aren't always what they seem. His novel is populated by shizophrenics, harmless and otherwise, as well as sociopaths, who know right from wrong but rationally choose to do wrong.
Two recent murders lead detective Milo Sturgis and his right hand Dr. Alex Delaware to an asylum. Even though the connection seems vague, they are trying to connect some dots to one of the patients, Peake. A long list of bad memories is unfolded throughout the book,while they are trying to plot Peake into the picture. Is he truly mad? Is he set up, or totally unimportant to the murders? A good paced, well written story that sometimes may be slightly over the top, sometimes a bit difficult to unt...more
I am a huge fan so maybe I am one reason the books keep coming. I love the different twists he puts into these books, not to heavy or gruesome but just enough to keep you interested. I loved it. It was different & I always love how Milo & Alex interaxt. Keep them coming.
In Monster, Alex Delaware and sidekick Milo Sturgis investigate the gruesome murders of a struggling actor and a forensic psychologist. An added twist in the plot is that a patient in the forensic psychiatric hospital where the psychologist worked was seemingly able, through incoherent ramble, to portend the psychologist's murder. Kellerman takes the reader through the twists and turns expected of any suspense thriller and that will be sure to delight any fan of this genre. What I did find notew...more
Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis are working together again to solve this latest string of crimes that they are sure are related, but they can't quite figure out how. The one they call the "Monster" - is he or isn't he somehow involved. This one had me going to the very end. Great mystery!
As always with Kellerman, well-written, quick, suspenseful, and with twists that I didn't precisely figure out before they were revealed, so altogether a good, enjoyable read. 3 stars just mean that, though I really enjoyed the book, it's not great "literature."
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Jonathan Kellerman was born in New York City in 1949 and grew up in Los Angeles. He helped work his way through UCLA as an editorial cartoonist, columnist, editor and freelance musician. As a senior, at the age of 22, he won a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for fiction.
Like his fictional protagonist, Alex Delaware, Jonathan received at Ph.D. in psychology at the age of 24, with a specialty in the t...more
More about Jonathan Kellerman...
Like his fictional protagonist, Alex Delaware, Jonathan received at Ph.D. in psychology at the age of 24, with a specialty in the t...more
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