Customer Reviews
Interesting Characters, More Alex Delaware Than Recently, and a Flawed Police Investigation - By: Donald Mitchell, 09 Nov 2008 
I hate to admit it: I like to read books about serial killers. The abnormal psychology that drives them provides a new perspective on what every day life is alll about. This book begins as such a classic, involving lots of weirdness (hands chopped off, bones kept as souvenirs, bodies facing east, burials of prostitutes in a nature sanctuary, the Bird Marsh) . . . but tails off from there. The book's redeeming feature is that Jonathan Kellerman takes the time to make some of the new characters interesting, complex, & likely to surprise the reader.
Alex Delaware also has a bigger role to play than in several of the recent books in the series, especiallly in acting like a good guy.
The book's main weakness is that much of the plot hinges on the police having not done enough investigation to find out what alll of the related parties look like. That seemed like a big miss. As a result, I was left feeling dissatisfied with the book at the end . . . especiallly after the motive for murder became clear, despite its strong beginning.
Unless you feel like you need to read every word that Jonathan Kellerman wrote about Alex Delaware, you could skip this book & not miss any important developments in the on-going characters.
