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cloudyapple's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
retiredlibrarylady's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoy reading about Alex Delaware, psychologist, and Milo Sturgis, detective, solving crimes, but this one was less exciting than most. Gavin Quick and an unknown female are found murdered and there are no leads. Gavin was under the care of celebrity psychologist Mary Ann Koppel, who also turns up dead. Eventually there are even more dead bodies to put into the complicated mix, which comes down to medical fraud. A lot of talking and speculation slow down the story.
lazwright's review against another edition
3.0
Again, better than the past few Delaware novels, although this one got a bit "conspiracy theory" in the conclusion of the mystery, with some rather "more outlandish than normal" plot twists.
emese_from_the_nineties's review against another edition
2.0
I found this book at the office under "grab it for free". I read the cover with the synopsis and it immediately grabbed my attention, so I thought lets give it a try and give this book a home!
I spent couple of weeks in California in April 2022. The first half of the book reminded me on the sunny streets of California with the sandy beaches with threatening rocks, light breezes, perfect sunsets and State Route 1, where I was driving my rented Mustang a lot and was enjoying the life. I really enjoyed the first part of the book. It starts with a double homicide of a 20 something boy and an unidentified young girl. Milo, the lead investigator starts to work on the case with the support of the consultant Alex Delaware. The more they found out, the more we did not know.
PLOT: 2.5⭐
the investigation starts with a nice space, there are more and more questions and lots of tiny twist throughout the storyline to a point, where the reader starts to ask: who was XY again? What did he has to do with that? I enjoyed that there was 1 main line and 4-5 supporting lines which were running parallel, however, it became too much at a certain point. Some of the supporting story line did not provide any added value to the characters or to the story, did not really fit into the main concept and were not built up nicely.
WRITING STLYE: 5⭐
The amount of the dialogues and narratives are well balanced. Not too complex but not too shallow writing, nice writing skills! I enjoyed the style of Jonathan Kellerman. I was able to really participate in the story and could not wait what happens next, how Milo and Alex react, what are their next steps, what they find out - until the first half of the book.
ENDING: 1⭐
"oh, is it over? What was again the motive? I did not realize the book came to an end." - that is how I felt. What a pity! I really enjoyed the first 300-350 pages!!
There were so many twists and characters that the main storyline at some point got lost and the reader became confused. I had the feeling that some of the supporting parallel storylines were built in, artificially designed to have more pages. Sorry to say that. The first part of the book was really 5 start without doubt.
That was presumably my first and last book from Jonathan Kellerman.
I spent couple of weeks in California in April 2022. The first half of the book reminded me on the sunny streets of California with the sandy beaches with threatening rocks, light breezes, perfect sunsets and State Route 1, where I was driving my rented Mustang a lot and was enjoying the life. I really enjoyed the first part of the book. It starts with a double homicide of a 20 something boy and an unidentified young girl. Milo, the lead investigator starts to work on the case with the support of the consultant Alex Delaware. The more they found out, the more we did not know.
PLOT: 2.5⭐
the investigation starts with a nice space, there are more and more questions and lots of tiny twist throughout the storyline to a point, where the reader starts to ask: who was XY again? What did he has to do with that? I enjoyed that there was 1 main line and 4-5 supporting lines which were running parallel, however, it became too much at a certain point. Some of the supporting story line did not provide any added value to the characters or to the story, did not really fit into the main concept and were not built up nicely.
WRITING STLYE: 5⭐
The amount of the dialogues and narratives are well balanced. Not too complex but not too shallow writing, nice writing skills! I enjoyed the style of Jonathan Kellerman. I was able to really participate in the story and could not wait what happens next, how Milo and Alex react, what are their next steps, what they find out - until the first half of the book.
ENDING: 1⭐
"oh, is it over? What was again the motive? I did not realize the book came to an end." - that is how I felt. What a pity! I really enjoyed the first 300-350 pages!!
There were so many twists and characters that the main storyline at some point got lost and the reader became confused. I had the feeling that some of the supporting parallel storylines were built in, artificially designed to have more pages. Sorry to say that. The first part of the book was really 5 start without doubt.
That was presumably my first and last book from Jonathan Kellerman.
holl3640's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
olena_m's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
3.25
hollie313's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
3.75
weaselweader's review against another edition
4.0
A great psychological thriller that avoids psychological techno-speak!
When a young couple parked for a little late night loving beside an empty house on Mulholland Drive are found murdered with what appears to be sexual overtones, LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis is stumped. While the woman eludes identification completely, Milo and his consulting psychologist sidekick, Alex Delaware, identify the male as Gavin Quick, a troubled young man undergoing psychotherapy as a result of behavioural changes attributed to a severe head injury he received in a car accident. The chance discovery that Quick's therapist, Mary Lou Koppel, had another patient who was murdered only a year earlier seemed like a coincidence until Koppel herself was found murdered with an MO that resembled the first double killing. The game is on as Sturgis and Delaware track the killer on a convoluted trail that crosses prison reform, group therapy, fraudulent billing and insurance scams, Rwandan genocide (yes, you read that one right) and mercenary killers for hire!
That may all seem a little far-fetched, to be sure, but the story rests on a firm foundation of clues and, as always, thought-provoking analysis and deductions that rely on Delaware's understanding of the human condition as a psychologist. But, unlike Rage, a story which was a near incomprehensible thicket of psycho-babble, Therapy is a straightforward police procedural but set firmly and predictably in Kellerman's well-known psychology environment.
Much of the story is told in the form of a give-and-take brainstorming dialogue between Delaware and Sturgis in which they bounce their ideas about the case off one another. While this technique may prove wearisome and perhaps difficult to follow in a regular book format, Rubenstein's scintillating performance on the audio book presentation brought Kellerman's command of realistic dialogue to life and made this form of story-telling straightforward and marvelously entertaining!
There was also a moment toward the end of the novel that deserves special recognition. Of course, the Jane Doe from the opening chapters was ultimately identified. When her brother arrived to confirm the identification and claim the body, the conversation that he had with Delaware was so bleak, so poignant and so gut-wrenching, it almost broke my heart. Frankly, I've always thought of Kellerman as a thriller writer and I never thought that he had writing at that level in him.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
When a young couple parked for a little late night loving beside an empty house on Mulholland Drive are found murdered with what appears to be sexual overtones, LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis is stumped. While the woman eludes identification completely, Milo and his consulting psychologist sidekick, Alex Delaware, identify the male as Gavin Quick, a troubled young man undergoing psychotherapy as a result of behavioural changes attributed to a severe head injury he received in a car accident. The chance discovery that Quick's therapist, Mary Lou Koppel, had another patient who was murdered only a year earlier seemed like a coincidence until Koppel herself was found murdered with an MO that resembled the first double killing. The game is on as Sturgis and Delaware track the killer on a convoluted trail that crosses prison reform, group therapy, fraudulent billing and insurance scams, Rwandan genocide (yes, you read that one right) and mercenary killers for hire!
That may all seem a little far-fetched, to be sure, but the story rests on a firm foundation of clues and, as always, thought-provoking analysis and deductions that rely on Delaware's understanding of the human condition as a psychologist. But, unlike Rage, a story which was a near incomprehensible thicket of psycho-babble, Therapy is a straightforward police procedural but set firmly and predictably in Kellerman's well-known psychology environment.
Much of the story is told in the form of a give-and-take brainstorming dialogue between Delaware and Sturgis in which they bounce their ideas about the case off one another. While this technique may prove wearisome and perhaps difficult to follow in a regular book format, Rubenstein's scintillating performance on the audio book presentation brought Kellerman's command of realistic dialogue to life and made this form of story-telling straightforward and marvelously entertaining!
There was also a moment toward the end of the novel that deserves special recognition. Of course, the Jane Doe from the opening chapters was ultimately identified. When her brother arrived to confirm the identification and claim the body, the conversation that he had with Delaware was so bleak, so poignant and so gut-wrenching, it almost broke my heart. Frankly, I've always thought of Kellerman as a thriller writer and I never thought that he had writing at that level in him.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss