i picked up Kellerman because Stephen King recommended him as a writer in King's own autobiographical ON WRITING book. King's point was that you could do worse if you want to see how a top pop writer crafts a novel.

after reading RAGE, however, and thinking i'd made a mistake, i also picked up FLESH AND BLOOD by Kellerman, as well.

while both are fairly well-written and King's point taken for the 'not for every taste' slant he'd offered it in, i was disappointed.

though i liked the angle of having a psychiatrist as the protagonist, they equally felt formulaic (not in a good way, which there can be, imho) but stilted.

to give kellerman his due, too: there was some interesting technical proceedure stuff, and his dialogue and descriptions were evocative at times.

i was particularly unhappy by the way he kept integrating thinly-disguised 'straight from the headlines' characters (Heidi Fleiss, for example) that were so cardboard thin, it was as if you had to be watching E! NEWS with one eye and scanning the book with the other.

while i like when writers base characters in fiction on real-life stories and people -- it can make the reading interesting on the 'what is real vs. what is fiction?' level -- it has to work on both levels or it just feels forced, or, worse, lazy.