These two Kellerman mystery novels came to my house with a batch of books from friends who were moving. These beloved friends had so many wonderful books from throughout their long lives--on poetry, religion, civil rights, inspiration, literature (got a wonderful shelf of Dickens), art, music. Somehow, two modern paperbacks by Kellerman ended up in the mix of musty-yellowed pages, crumbling bindings, and venerated authors. I haven't discovered yet why the anomalous novels were part of the collection, but because they stood out as such oddities, I of course decided to read them first. I am going to contend in this blog post that Jonathan Kellerman is not venerated.
Airport Books
Neither Monster (1999) nor Self-Defense (1995) is about an airport. Both are, however, New York Times best sellers according to red stripes across the covers. It is further noted on the covers that each book is "An Alex Delaware Novel." Each book is about 500 pages long. Airport books. People getting on airplanes want neither slender volumes nor future doorstops...the book must last just long enough, but not too long. That's about 500 pages.
Now, I have been on many airplanes where I needed more padding, but not in my reading material. Both of these books seemed artificially long to me, like the text had been cut apart and irrelevant detail added in for length--maybe not even by the original author. The padding was distracting and slowed these books way down, killed the tension. Every single character, no matter how minor, was described in detail--face, makeup, hair, clothing, skin, hands, mannerisms, size, smell. And so were locations--trees, street names, directions to places, type of building, color of building, condition of lawn, parking of the car. The long driving sequences were burdened with detail that was just detail. Perhaps the driving directions were supposed to give a sense of reality or authenticity, but I think if you don't live in Los Angeles (the setting for both books) you don't really care and if you do live in Los Angeles, you just need a few hints, not a map. I could trace on an L.A. street map every single location. It was too much.
Meanwhile, back in the mystery...what, we are in the middle of a mystery? I thought we were in a travel book. And that's the real criticism, that the wordiness and padding removed me from the plot for such long periods of time that I had to flip backward in the book to find out what was going on! And, you know my rules for classic mystery--no detail should be extraneous. If something is mentioned, it should have direct relevance to either theme or plot and preferably both. (Thank you, Dorothy L. Sayers.)
Yes, here comes another one of my modern-mystery pet peeves. Because this book is part of an ongoing series, we endured strange digressions that would only be relevant to someone who had read the previous book or books. I guess that ensures continuity for regular readers. But regular readers would get subtle hints. Surely these whacks over the head are as annoying to regulars as they are to first time readers. These backflashes (not flashbacks) were yet another impediment to getting this book going, getting it to work, getting it to do its job as a mystery and a "good read." Itch-itch. Cystitis.
Dr. Sherlock Freud
Alex Delaware is a psychologist who consults for the police. He pairs up with a detective who is GAY, it is noted several times (I think only as yet another backflash and so we women readers don't get too attached.) Milo's gayness is really irrelevant to his character as a friend and police detective, as it should be. Alex is aggressively heterosexual as we know from his fade-to-black encounters with his cute wife. (So we women can fantasize about him.) Really, the wife is totally irrelevant to this book--I bet she's part of the series cystitis, from a previous book or two back, needing to be updated.
| Alex (female) Kingston as Dr. Who's River Song-- "Love a tomb!" |
In Self-Defense, there is a long sequence of hypnosis and age-regression that was pretty miraculous. Delaware age-regressed the client to particular days and times of day. It was presented as a mundane therapeutic process. Maybe it is in California. It helped move the plot along.
Multi-Murders
These books would have been well-plotted if the extraneous material had been removed. Individual scenes were quite tense and spooky and the settings were creepy. Much of Monster was set in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. I still feel claustrophobic thinking about it. Self-Defense was less atmospheric until the action moved to an old estate that had formerly been a nudist and then an artist colony. You could almost smell the dead bodies under the turf.
| You are getting very sleepy... |
Self-Defense introduced a young woman who was having bad dreams. Milo brought her to Delaware for treatment. She and Milo had connected during a trial of a brutal mass murderer. The mass murdered was only in the book to justify the heroine's bad dreams (and maybe to bring in some gruesome shock-scenes). From clues in her dreams, a whole series of murders is disclosed. The ending is obscure. I never did get the title's significance.
Victimized and victim women were prominent in each book. Many men were killed also, but never with as much detail and fear. Milo and Delaware were the ones who kept their heads and restored women to wellness. Both books featured multiple deaths--at least five main deaths each and many others mentioned. This seems totally unrealistic to me and, pardon the phrase, overkill (!).
| No one ever really smiled when using the microfiche machine--it was a pain in the hiney. |
These books are from 15-20 years ago and boy do they show it. They come across as modern, except for the hilarity of their technology. Pay phones. Answering machines. Microfiche. Researching at the library. So quaint. I leave it to you to ponder whether these mysteries would even be possible in today's age of instantly transmitted photography, rapid information retrieval, and inter-connectedness.
Conclusion
I struggled through these books, but I don't recommend them, even for airports. Stick with John Gresham or Pat Cornwell. Maybe I'm just not easily amused, said Queen Victoria. Like my first experiences with Chinese food, my first experiences with mysteries were of the best and everything else is a bit of a comedown. We soldier on.
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