VICTIMS by Jonathan Kellerman

Victims is the latest Jonathan Kellerman work featuring his beloved central characters, psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD lieutenant Milo Sturgis.  So familiar are these Alex and Milo based books to a Kellerman fan, they have progressed from a formula to a tradition.   A tradition that contains all the elements of a good mystery, thriller and the promise that the next will be just as entertaining.

Vita Berlin, a nasty middle aged woman living alone and on disability in LA is found disemboweled in her apartment.  While the victim’s remains are gruesome, the crime scene is neat and orderly and the wounds surgical in technique.  Lieutenant Sturgis gets the call and due to the psychopathic nature of the crime, Dr. Delaware is immediately enlisted to consult.  Shortly into their investigation a second victim is discovered.  This time a nice guy, middle aged accountant, Marlon Quigg is accosted and brutally slain while out walking his dog.  The crime scene is outside in an abandoned park but the similarities to the first crime, surgical style wounds and the neatness of the surrounding area lead our crime fighting duo to suspect the worst, a serial killer.  The horrific brutality of the murders flashes Alex’s memory back to one of his particularly unpleasant experiences during his training years.  A California state mental hospital at Ventura (V-state) where he interned decades earlier, contained a separate unit for particularly disturbed patients and practiced its own brand of therapy, no longer accepted or practiced in his trade.  When Alex inquired about the Special Care Unit as an intern he was told only ‘you don’t want to go there.’  

Now, by using his training in psychology Alex is able to maneuver in the professional community where confidentially is sacred. Only through contacting and interviewing former employees of V-state and their offspring does Alex begin to suspect the psychotic killer could have once been a patient in the Special Care Unit.  Alex interviews Dr. Bern Shacker, a Beverly Hills psychologist who has treated each of the victims.  Further investigation reveals the good doctor is an impostor and may have once worked in the V-state Specialized Care Unit…but as a guard, not a doctor.  A third brutal homicide causes LAPD to ramp up the investigation adding resources to the team.  Police surveillance of Bern Shacker proves futile as the ‘doctor’ has abandoned his Beverly Hills office.  His true identity is discovered from figure prints found in his abandon office and an urgent search ensues.  Alex surmises that Shacker is most likely an accomplice but not the perpetrator of the murders.  Delaware learns the identity of a former V-state Special Care Unit patient that fits the profile of their perpetrator.  Grant Huggler was committed as an eleven year old after he shot his mother in the head and proceeded to explore the interworking of her body.  The hospital had used unorthodox methods to treat (or mistreat) Huggler’s disturbing obsessions.  Now decades later released from state care, Huggler’s deviant behavior requires the skill set of Dr. Delaware to locate him and end his rampage of terror. 

Kellerman wrote Victims for his fans.  The book is much more about the mystery and the crime than about the lives of the characters that appear in the Delaware mysteries. Very little energy was dispensed in character development…no touchy feely…just the facts mam.  This makes for a very intense and fast paced read...just the way I like them.  In fact, this style and genre are at the core of what this blog is all about…thoroughly enjoyable for men reading books.