When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman

I read this book on the basis of another recommendation from Cousin Dave, not the specific book, just the author. I found Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series, which now amounts to 25 books, and started with the first, released in 1985. This one was a winner from a number of perspectives. The main character, Dr. Delaware, is a child psychologist who was successful early in his career and retired at age 33, after his involvement in a particularly gruesome matter and when he realized that his own life had become empty as he blindly pursued his own financial and academic success. In retirement, he’s been having a good time, leading a fine life in Los Angeles when he gets pulled into a new crime. An LAPD detective wants him to interview a child who might have been witness to a murder but who won’t talk to the cops. Suddenly, Dr. Delaware finds meaning in his own life again, and he can’t let go of the matter, much like I felt as I read the book. This is about very dark stuff, the world of sociopathy, pedophilia, and worse. I kept wondering how Kellerman got so much right about the depraved and traumatized characters that he was writing about. Turns out, he’s a child psychologist who got his undergraduate degree from UCLA and his Ph.D. from USC. I don’t need to give you the plot, but please know that I had a hard time putting this book down. The various characters were believable, both the good guys for their altruistic qualities and human frailties, and the bad guys for their damaged egos. I also thought the quality of the writing was very literate, and I’ll give you one short example. Dr. Towle was one of the bad guys, a child psychiatrist who did not have his patients’ best interests at heart. Kellerman wrote of an encounter between Delaware and Towle: “[Towle] laughed. It was the first time I’d heard his laugh and I hoped it would be the last. It was a vacant discordant note, a blatant musical error screaming out in the middle of a symphony.” I’ve already acquired the second book in the series, “Blood Test.” Thanks Cousin Dave – a great recommendation.