Night Moves by Jonathan Kellerman

Chet Corvin, his wife, and two teenage kids live on a cul-de-sac in an upscale neighborhood in Beverly Hills.  Chet is a reinsurance executive who travels a lot and by all outward appearances looks to be normal.  Then one Sunday evening, the family goes out to dinner and returns to find a corpse in Chet’s home office.  The victim has suffered a violent death and is unidentifiable because his face is severely disfigured and his hands are missing… cut off above the wrists.  LAPD Lt. Milo Sturgis is assigned the case and immediately calls Dr. Alex Delaware to assist.  After interviewing the family and canvasing the cul-de-sac, no motives or leads as to the corpse’s identity are evident.  An eccentric next door neighbor, Trevor Britt, however, does tweak their antennae.  Britt is an artist of limited fame for a gruesome comic book series from years earlier.  He still freelances as an artist but has toned down the gore.  He is reclusive and unfriendly and refuses to be interviewed… but is he a murderer?  The cops don’t even have probable cause to search his property.

Seemingly at a dead end, the sleuths focus more energy on the Corvin family.  They discover some interesting behaviors not necessarily relevant to the case.  The teenage daughter has a learning disability and is often observed wondering outside late at night and her mother is overly protective of her.  Chet spends little time with the family and credit card billings suggest several infidelities.

 

Following a couple long shot hunches, Milo and Alex are able to identify the body but struggle to connect the dead man to the Corvins.  Then Chet turns up dead in a cheap no-tell motel in Hollywood.  Something is not normal with this suburban family but finding that something will be Milo’s and Alex’s greatest challenge yet.

To Jonathan Kellerman fans, Night Moves is just another winner in his Delaware/ Sturgis series.  A complex plot, that cleverly misdirects the reader down blind alleys as the truth is slowly and methodically unearthed, proves engaging.  Further the tenacity of the two lead characters with an admirable dose of compassion and tolerance rounds out an outstanding and sustainable series… great entertainment.